


In Absentia

by strange_glow



Series: Virus [8]
Category: Weiß Kreuz, 魔界医師メフィスト | Makai Ishi Mephisto (Manga)
Genre: M/M, Very AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2018-10-12 18:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strange_glow/pseuds/strange_glow
Summary: Brad may have {said} he prefers chaos, but there is such a thing as too much.  A return trip to Shinjuku has unforseen (Shut up, Schuldig!) consequences.Warning, this is totally politically incorrect.  Schwarz fans should know by now that Brad and the gang are the BAD GUYS.





	1. Chapter 1

  
Sylvia Linn was under lock and key; chained to a steel bed frame that was bolted, then welded to the steel paneled wall. The cell was one of ten, five on each side of a wide hallway, in a section of the second basement down under the school’s lab building. The over head lights were very bright, presumably to make up for being covered with an expanded steel mesh. There was nothing dark and dingy about the place; the smell of bleach a constant and the walls a blinding white stain resistant surface. Drains were set in the floor every few feet of the hall, and in the middle of each cell, with high power hoses hanging ready at each end of the hall. Prisoners were given a thickish paper smock with three armholes to wrap around themselves, male or female, long enough for decency sake, and nothing else. The same paper fabric was used for the fitted sheet on the thin mattress of the cot. There was no blanket or pillow; the temperature down here was kept at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn’t exactly the luxury Sylvia was accustomed to.  
Council Leader Griefeldt, as gray as his name in the uniform the brotherhood had never given up, stood on the other side of the cell’s inner, barred door, having come to listen to her demand to file a complaint.  
Anger and frustration colored her voice. “This is ridiculous. The accusation…”  
“You were found in the school Chancellor’s office in the early morning hours without permission,” he reminded her calmly. “You explain to me what is ridiculous. What exactly were you planning on doing?”  
She scowled. It occurred to her that in this case, telling the truth might just sound absurd enough to be considered a valid excuse. “I wanted to see Agent Virus’ records. There’s something very wrong going on here. The Elders….”  
“Are no longer with us,” Griefeldt reminded her.  
“The Japanese arm of Kritiker, Weiss, orchestrated their deaths,” she spat like an angry cat. “Weiss, Council Leader. Weiss, including one Kudoh Youji, AKA Sarazawa Yuuji.”  
“Then you’ve read Agent Crawford’s report,” was his response. A report she would not have had access too in the first place.  
“We’ve all heard the rumors. And everyone believes it,” she said flatly. “Need I remind you, with respect, Herr Griefeldt, Virus can control others?”  
Griefeldt drew a deep breath and looked down at his boots, tapping the rather archaic riding crop that came with the office on his pant leg as he exhaled in not quite a sigh, not quite annoyance. “Pray, continue,” he said, looking up at her again.  
“Don’t you see? Sarazawa—could be a traitor,” she wondered suddenly if her words were falling on deaf ears.  
He studied her for a few moments, then nodded. “I see. And you were hoping to find proof of that in the school Chancellor’s office.”  
“Sarazawa’s personal file,” she said. “I’m certain he’s had undo influence on Agent Crawford for years now, and with the council’s decision….”  
Griefeldt smiled wryly, his eyes not meeting hers. It was the look of a less than nurturing parent for a tiresome child.  
Sylvia found herself teetering on her own circumstantial quicksand. Sarazawa’s father was a highly respected member of the council. His mother was one of their leading biologists. Griefeldt was known for his integrity and having stood up to some of the more insane proposals of the Elders. To accuse the Council of not knowing what they were doing now when they voted was probably not the best way to handle this.  
“Frau Linn, we are Esset,” he stated. “Our honor is loyalty. Your loyalty is in question by your own admission. While Esset encourages agents to think for themselves, your decision has been to break our laws. Rather than being summarily executed—as the Elders would have done—you will be taken to a medical facility in Shinjuku, Japan, and held for observation for as long as it is necessary to ensure that you have not been compromised by an enemy agency, or simply gone mad…”  
“Agent Virus claims to have been brainwashed…!” she protested desperately.  
“And our finest telepaths have confirmed this!” he roared, done with being pacific. “This is not your business, Linn! You have neither the training nor the security level to be involved in investigating a fellow agent. You might have done better to bring your concerns to the Council before pulling this blatantly stupid stunt. I suggest you prepare yourself for your transfer and do not give your minders any further trouble, especially as we all know, our young Herr Crawford has a bit of a hair trigger,” he warned.  
She threw herself at the bars, only to be held back by the chains, “This is what I’m trying to tell you! Crawford will kill us all! You saw how he shot down Col. Amlisch,” she insisted. “Under the control of Sarazawa…!  
He shut the cell’s outer door on her, cutting off her protest.  
As the latch was set in place, she sighed and fell back on the cot again. She had tried, she told herself. Now she was on her own. Sarazawa was behind the slaughter of the Esset agents in Japan and the collapse of the temple on the Elders, she was certain of it.

@ @ @

  
“It could be a one off,” Yuuji said, and briefly wondered why he did not have a cigarette in his hand as he held it up to his face. He covered up the gesture by rubbing his cheek, then laid the offending hand down on the thigh of his crossed leg. “They hit on some poor bastard with a latent talent by accident and it will never happen again, that’s why you’re not seeing anything.” At least they had taken first class on Lufthansa and he had room to cross his long legs.  
“And then made a beeline straight to the heart of Esset to cause trouble?” Brad was reading over the report regarding Galea. “Nagi pulled up a few more bits and pieces, research papers, some names, a few prototypes on YouTube, minor things—unless you’re a member of a megalomaniacal paranoid post war survivors’ organization still dedicated to the Big Plan,” he said dryly.  
“Time to head to the moon base in our flying saucers?” Schuldig offered.  
Brad snorted. “I thought it was Mars.”  
“Too Red, communist,” Yuuji tossed in.  
Schuldig laughed, then focused on a woman across the way. She blinked, then looked up at the window beside her. A window that overlooked the wing.  
Brad reached over and gave the inside of his thigh a vicious pinch.  
“Sheiss!” the telepath was startled and wounded, tuning to glare at him as he rubbed his bruised leg. The woman he had been linked with must have picked up the pain because she too was looking puzzled and very uncomfortable in her seat.  
“I told you, no more Twilight Zone game,” Brad hissed at him.  
Schuldig sank into a sulk.  
Aya had his elegant nose in his German language book, the audio files on his IPhone, ear buds in.  
Nagi was playing a vid game on his tablet, Tot was asleep, snoring quietly on his shoulder.  
Kurumi was reading a paperback with a lurid cover of helicopters and explosions and trying to stay awake. The girls had sat up late into night, talking. Schuldig had assured Brad she had no intention of backing out of their deal, she was just nervous, and curious.  
“What did I ever do to Sylvia Linn?” Yuuji mused aloud.  
“Nothing. She’s just looking for a fight,” Brad said, focused on his laptop again.  
“You just did too good a job of pissing her off in the first place,” Schuldig grumbled.  
“Everyone pisses her off,” Brad said. “That exotic Asian femme fatale thing is supposed to work. Problem being that Esset couldn’t use her in the USA because they think any Chinese with an interest in anything more than buffet cooking and dry cleaning is A Spy, and because of Amlisch, she’s been relegated to countries where the men are not to her liking. So, she actually has to work,” he finished snidely.  
Schuldig looked at him sullenly. “You’re horrible.”  
“Stop being so damned sentimental and face the fact that your high school crush hates your guts,” Brad shot him an angry look.  
“Whoah, little jealousy there, Brad?” Yuuji asked archly.  
“You stay out of this,” Schuldig warned. “And why is that thing sending her to Shinjuku?” he asked Brad. “What will they do to her there?”  
“I have no idea,” Brad said mildly. “Anything to do with Shinjuku is out of my reach, remember? Is it remotely possible that I can be allowed to focus on this report?”  
Schuldig sighed and settled down, closing his eyes, the back of his hand along Brad’s thigh so he could get some peace from the minds around them, especially the guy in the back who was convinced they were going to fall out of the sky….  
“Don’t do it,” Brad warned. “You pull that stupid trick one more time, and I will personally pack you and ship you freight from now on.”

@ @ @

Griefeldt was waiting for them in his comfy corner office on the third floor of the main building. Light came in through two large windows overlooking the central open space where students lingered, loitered or languished, depending on their grades, under the bullet laden trees on what was proving to be a beautiful day. One class was at archery practice. Another was sketching one of their fellows who posed in a bedsheet toga with a styrofoam craft wreath and a broom on a packing box plinth. On the exercise track visible in the distance between the buildings, a herd of students thundered by in their white gym kits, four abreast, in military lock step, their coach behind them making sure there were no stragglers. A victim of paint ball assassination lay on the grass dying of boredom while others took cover and tried to spot the killer.  
Brad had left Shinjou Kurumi with Nagi, Tot and Fujimiya at one of the smaller hotels in town. He wasn’t about to let that cat out of the bag. It would mean explaining a whole lot more about Shinjuku than he ever planned on doing. The last thing Esset needed was to get in there.   
Gentlemen, welcome back,” he said, indicating a row of lightly padded arm chairs along one wall of his office. “Pull them over, sit.”  
Crawford was struck awkward again. This was just too much like a trap.  
“You’re too well trained, Crawford. Sit at attention if it makes you feel any better, but sit.” He shuffled some folders on his desk, lining them up in the order he wanted them.  
Once the chairs were arranged, and everyone seated, Griefeldt looked up again and sat back comfortably. “At least it wasn’t a complete wild goose chase. This Galea group lead seems promising. Experimenting on neural implants. It’s quite possible they hit on one that can enhance latent talent. From what young Naoe has come up with, we’ll toss the net out and see what we catch. In the mean time, I don’t suppose you can explain to me why Frau Traugott is insistent on turning over Agent Linn to this Dr. Mephisto. Sounds like the name a comic book villain would choose for himself,” he glanced at one of the files on his desk. “What’s he going to do with her?”  
“I don’t know,” Brad said honestly. “Frau Traugott, that is, the creature inside her, was—or possibly is—Dr. Mephisto’s head nurse. I warned the council that these creatures take protecting those in their territory very seriously.”  
“Which brings me to another point. How many of them are there?” Griefeldt said seriously. “I thought I was loosing my mind until I ran into two of them passing each other in the hall way.”  
Brad frowned. “I warned her that wouldn’t do.”  
“Its very disconcerting,” Griefeldt leaned back in his chair again.  
“Frau Traugott!” Brad raised his voice curtly at the ceiling. “Would you come here for a few minutes?”  
“Really, Herr Crawford, there is an intercom,” her prim voice came through the system.  
“Just get in here,” he said in exasperation.  
The door opened and she clipped in on her sensible heels, and stood there with her hands folded in front of her skirt Japanese worker style.  
“What exactly is Dr. Mephisto supposed to do with Agent Linn?” Brad asked.  
“That would be difficult to say until he has diagnosed her problem,” Traugott said with a wicked smile.  
“Well that’s easy enough; she’s gone mad,” Griefeldt grumbled. “Accusing a third generation scion of being a traitor.”  
“Hysteria,” Traugott said. “Doctor will cure her or kill her. There’s always a need for spare parts.”  
“So this wont come back to haunt us?” Griefeldt said.  
“Most assuredly not, Herr Griefeldt,” Traugott replied.  
“We don’t like loose ends here at Esset, Frau Traugott,” Griefeldt said sternly.  
“Waste not, want not,” was her polite reply.  
Brad was entertained by the standstill. Neither the creature nor Esset were going to give up their line in the sand.  
Griefeldt gave her a wary look, then decided to chose his battles wisely. “That will be all, Fraulein,” he slipped and used the pre-feminism diminutive.  
She bowed slightly and turned to leave, shutting the door quietly behind her.  
“Not a thing,” Griefeldt said, frowning. “It’s as if there is no one there.”  
“Exactly,” Schuldig said. “Creeepy.”  
“Shut up, Schuldig,” Brad said.  
Griefeldt looked at Yuuji. “This accusation, it’s very uncomfortable. Naturally I did not discus it with your parents. No need to start World War Three just yet,” he said with a wry look. “No one in the council has heard a thing. Keep it that way. We’re all just getting things back on track and this sort of nonsense is unwarranted.”  
Schuldig shifted uneasily in his chair. “Herr Griefeldt,” he said carefully. “The fact is, and no, I won’t shut up,” he shot Brad a look. “The fact is,” he looked at Griefeldt again, “No one seems to be very upset at all about the whole thing. We were all there when the earthquake hit, and the ocean rushed in, we could have been killed. But any one of us could be accused by rumor and circumstances at some point in the future. What exactly is the Council’s position on the demise of the Elders?”  
Griefeldt sighed and leaned forward, his hands on his desk. “Young man, the Council’s status on this matter is as follows. Shit happens. Esset goes on.” He stood up, indicating the door behind them. “Agent Linn is ready to be moved out of confinement. I hope that by the time you return, we have some background on this Galea group.”

TBC


	2. Chapter Two

  
The walk over to the lab building took only a few minutes, but all three noticed the changes on the grounds. Everything was more—verdant. Not just because it was Spring, and the snow had finally melted, but because the once utilitarian plant life was more exuberant. Flowers bloomed in what had been hedge beds and on vines climbing walls. Someone had planted more trees. They must have paid the big money for full grown ones and a crane to plant them in, because they were all of a good size.  
“Traugott,” Brad said, before anyone could say anything, and that pretty much covered it.  
They walked up the steps and into the lab building through a portico with four classic pillars and a pediment depicting some perfectly classicalized scientists discovering presumably amazing things in flasks and an old fashioned microscope. The top two floors were student class rooms; the ground floor for administration. The two levels below ground were for research and experimentation, and the cells that held out of control talents. The elevator that worked the top three floors was separate from the one that went down. One needed a pass key to access these floors. Brad found his pass had been changed to include them.  
“Yuu-chan!” a woman’s voice called sharply.  
Sarazawa turned, “Help me,” he whispered in a small voice, then hailed her in his normal one. “Mother, what are you doing running loose?”  
“Covering for Prof. Lippert.” Chieko Sarazawa was dressed for work in a white lab coat and pale grey slacks over sneakers, the statement backed by a faint look of stress. “She’s down with something disgusting. I keep telling her not to cook her meals in the lab, there’s always a mix up.” She looked up at Crawford. “Why do you keep getting taller?”  
“You’re shrinking, Sarazawa-Sensei,” Brad said without a trace of humor.  
She smacked him lightly on the chest. “Bad boy,” she said, then looked at her son. “Are you coming home for dinner tonight, or do I have to go over your head and commandeer you?”  
“He can’t,” Brad said, holding the elevator door open with a hand. “We’re under orders to remove Agent Linn. She’s to be taken to Shinjuku and admitted to the hospital there. My guess is permanently.”  
“’Guess’,” she leaned over and looked up at him skeptically from under her brow. “That’s a new word for you, Brat.”  
“My talent doesn’t work that far,” he reminded her with a slight smile at the old nickname.  
“Ah,” she said, still skeptical, and shifted back on her feet to stand up straight again. “And this can’t wait one more night?”  
“Mother Dearest,” Yuuji caught her by the shoulders and turned her around to aim her down the hall. “I’ll call you the minute we’re back, I promise. Then we will all come to dinner.”  
/’All’?/ Schuldig invaded his thoughts. An image of a very angry Fujimiya and his katana came with it.  
/Shush!/ Yuuji thought back at him. “Cross my heart,” he told his mother, giving her a little push.  
“So much for filial loyalty,” she grouched teasingly, then turned back around to look up at him, pushing a lock of red-brown hair behind her ear. “You know I have read the report on Shinjuku. You be careful,” she admonished.  
“I will,” he assured her. “Stop being such a mom in front of my grown up friends, will you? It’s so uncool.”  
She smiled archly and headed back the way she had been going.  
Brad continued to hold the elevator while Schuldig and Yuuji stepped in, then followed them. He pressed the button for the sub basement and sighed, leaning on the wall. He looked at Yuuji. “I sent flowers. It was lame, but I couldn’t think of anything else.”  
“She knows what a cold bastard you are,” Yuuji assured him.  
Brad frowned at the doors of the elevator as it stopped and they opened. “I might have been a little more communicative.”  
“Well, it’s a little late for it now,” Yuuji said ironically, walking out past him. “Maybe next time I get blown up.”  
Schuldig trailed along behind them, reluctant to be the first one Sylvia saw. He had his hands in his slacks pockets again, and was wishing he was anywhere else, like maybe waiting in the SUV. Of course Sylvia had been very drunk, and all that, and yes, he had taken advantage of the situation, but it had been a whole week of a lot of fun before she got tired of him. And okay, so she was right, he was clingy as swamp mud, and who wanted a boyfriend who not only was clingy, but wanted to get inside your head and know your every thought 24/7? But Sylvia had been awesome and knowing, and he had been so head over heels for her—along with so many other guys she had sampled and dumped.  
And maybe he had been a little jealous, and getting assigned to Crawford had been a smart piece of revenge, but then—but then.  
He looked up at the back of Brad’s head, watching the turn of his cheek, remembering the first time he had gone with him to some forgotten assignment. The broad shoulders, the confidence, the way he just took a situation apart and manipulated people like toys without even being a telepath. Everything about him was perfect.  
It wasn’t just a momentary thing. He’d already seen that Brad did not take relationships lightly. After all, how many times had he hunted him down and threatened to kill him?  
And this thing with Sarazawa, damn it.  
Schuldig sighed and pretended it was from boredom.  
“Yuuji, do the honors” Brad said, taking out his key card as they turned down the hall to the cells.  
“Gee, thanks,” Yuuji said. “Do you have any idea of how much this makes me want a cigarette? That jerk doctor tied up everything; women, booze, smoking, it all triggers a cascade and you know it.”  
“Think of the lovely Fujimiya and suck it up, Sarazawa,” Schuldig said, not wanting to get stuck with the job himself. “Sooner or later, you have to break the cycle on your own.”  
Brad turned to look at Yuuji in front of the door to Linn’s cell. “I want her malleable, and if that means you using your talent on her, do it.”  
Yuuji studied him for a minute, then sighed a little. “You are a fucking sadist, you know that?”  
Brad smiled cruelly, then slid the card through the reader.  
“She accused you,” Schuldig said to Yuuji. “Why you out of all of us?”  
“Because it’s more convenient to accuse someone she wants out of her way rather than the one she can’t have,” Brad said succinctly and opened the door, standing to one side.  
Sylvia had been allowed a simple dark grey knit pull over dress with flimsy flat shoes for the journey. She sat on the edge of the cot, still chained, and glowered at the open door, then blinked as she saw Sarazawa standing there.  
“Good afternoon, Agent Linn,” Sarazawa said in politely formal German. “Now I don’t know what possessed you to accuse me of orchestrating the deaths of the Elders, but you’ve gotten yourself into some pretty serious trouble while trying to implicate me. You have two choices. Behave, or I will make you behave.”  
“Humph!” she huffed. “How am I supposed to go anywhere like this?” She held up her chained wrists as far as they would go from her ankles.  
“You’ll keep them on,” Brad said over Yuuji’s shoulder. “We’re using the ‘company’ jet. So lets keep this a fun trip, shall we?” he smiled teasingly.  
/She’s blaming Sarazawa for everything,/ Schuldig informed him. /He’s ruined all her carefully constructed plans./  
/Do I even want to know what they were?/ Brad asked wryly, not the least concerned.  
Schuldig took a moment to consider. /No. But she will try to seduce you again./ His unhappiness came through the mental link.  
Brad looked at him. /Rather the odd decision, given the company she’ll be in,/ he smiled coolly, then turned to look back in the cell. “Lets have her out,” he stepped back, handing Yuuji the keys he had been given. “You know the procedure.”  
Yuuji unlocked the inner gate. “We’re more than evenly matched, Linn, so cut any drama out of your plans. Save it for Shinjuku, where you’ll need it.” He walked over to the cot at a slow, easy pace, watching her for any signs of movement.  
She held up her wrists. The chain to them was the one also looped through the bed frame. “If you’re afraid, give me the keys and I’ll undo them myself,” she said, giving him a teasing half challenge, half sneer.  
/So she can use them to take your eyes out,/ Schuldig warned from the hallway. He was staying out of her sight for now, reading her surface thoughts, not announcing his presence by tapping into her mind.  
/I’m a big boy, Shuu, I can take care of myself./ Yuuji tossed her the keys, calling her bluff and momentarily throwing her off her game. “Left wrist only. Slide the chain out, then cuff it up again.”  
/She’s going nuts trying to figure out why you just handed her a weapon./  
/Like I need a telepath to tell me that. I work alone, now shush./  
Sylvia did as instructed, unlocking her left wrist, watching Sarazawa every second she didn’t need her eyes to see where to put the keys. The third one worked, the cuff fell open. She now had two meters of heavy chain to work with.  
Yuuiji watched her, an arch look on his handsome face.  
Rather slowly, but not too slow, she slid the chain out of the cot frame, calculating.  
Calling his bluff, she slid the last links free and whipped her arm out, using her talent to put more power behind the fling of the steel links.  
Yuuji turned sideways, and barred it with his left arm, letting it wrap around his wrist. Clasping it with both hands, he yanked her forward under the impetus of her own throw. While she was struggling to gain balance, impaired by her still manacled ankles, he yanked her forward, down prone on her belly, and in two steps, put his knee on her lower back, pinning her core to the concrete floor. He clasped the back of her neck at the base of her skull with a wide fingered grip, leaning over to speak very quietly, “There’s this little trick, if you recall your training, right here, in these vertebra,” he shifted and tightened his fingers and thumb for emphasis, sending a numbing pain up through her skull, “where someone just flick their fingers and snap your spine. Do you still want to see which one of us can win?”  
“Let me up,” she said through clenched teeth and a cheek pressed to the floor.  
“You might have a chance to survive in Shinjuku,” he warned. “But you’re dead here.” He got off her back and pulled her up, lightly hefting her back into a seated position on the cot as if they had just been sparring, nothing personal. He scooped up the fallen keys from the floor and tossed them to her. “Fix those chains. You know the drill. Wrist under ankle manacles and let’s go.”  
“Your third rate powers won’t work on me,” she drew the chain under the one on her ankles as instructed and locked the cuff back on her wrist. “When I get out of Japan, I’m coming for you, Sarazawa.”  
“With a line like that, you’re already falling for me,” he grinned.  
Her temper flared up even more. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!”  
“That’s enough, Linn,” Brad stepped into the doorway where she could see him now. “And just for your information, I’m immune to him. I planned the deaths of the Elders.”  
Her face went blank with shock. She found her voice, but it came out in a hoarse whisper. “You could have ruled half the world.”  
“With the Elders ruling me. What fun would that have been?” he asked blandly. “Come along, Linn. Make this a little less annoying for all of us.”

  
@ @ @

Aya, literally dressed to kill, was pacing the floor in the hotel suite and stopped in leather squeaking mid-stride as the door opened. When he saw Yuuji was alone in the doorway, he kind of lost his self control.  
When his mouth was free, Yuuji caught his breath (and his balance, which was a little off at the moment). “Ah, yeah,” he glanced over Aya’s shoulder at the Shinju girl, who was staring wide eyed at them. “Gear up, let’s go. Naoe,” he said to the youth sitting on the suite’s little sofa. Crawford wants you and Tot to stay here in Switzerland. Traugott-sama’s expecting you. If you want to argue with him, do it now, we’re on a tight schedule. Shinjou-san, the van is out front.” He pushed Aya away firmly, if reluctantly. Aya’s ‘mission’ outfit had always had a sort of disturbing fascination for him as the supposedly uber-straight Kudoh, and now he knew why. Which made it even more fascinating. “Damn, Aya,” he whispered at him. “Behave.”  
“Blame your stupid ‘talent’. I think I’m getting separation anxiety,” Aya snapped at him. He went to pick up the carry all he’d stowed his few clothes in, and the long bundle that was his katana, slinging the straps over his narrow shoulders cross body wise.  
“I really don’t think you guys should be going in there with out someone who’s not affected by the time dome,” Nagi was on his feet now, beginning to stress out.  
“It didn’t affect me, or Aya,” Yuuji said, stepping aside to let Aya past him out the door. Shinjou was double checking her small rolling suitcase. She shut it and snapped the locks, and picked up her purse. Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuji saw Tot take her hands and prattle at her about having fun and watching out for monsters.  
Naoe looked about to freak out. “But you guys don’t know how the temporal anomaly works! I had it timed, and adjusted for the variances, and—and he really shouldn’t go without me. It’s not fair!” He shoved his hair back out of his eyes, looking more like ten than sixteen.  
“You’re not being cut out of the fun, Kiddo, you’re on a separate assignment,” Yuuji told Nagi. “Brad wants that Galea Group by the digital balls, and you’re the one with the magic fingers.”  
Nagi looked irritated in the way only a teen could, though whether by the ‘kiddo’ or the ‘magic fingers’ was moot at this point; Yuuji had been told to move it and move it he was.  
The SUV did not have a trunk to stuff Linn in and the tension between the three of them on the drive over had been making his skin crawl. Yuuji knew it was the brain washing, but he wanted a cigarette so badly he had to insist on stopping at a chemists for a pack of nicotine patches before he killed everyone. “Enough, Girls, let’s go. We have a private flight to catch and they don’t get to sit around for hours on the runway like commercial flights.”  
Nagi sighed and took out his phone. As Yuuji shut the door behind Shinjou’s suit case, he heard the kid demand to know if Crawford had lost his mind.  
Good question.  
“Who exactly is this ‘Linn’ person?” Aya asked as they were going down in the elevator.  
Yuuji raised an eyebrow at the suspicion and jealousy roiling off the purple menace. “Technically, no one,” he said. “Once you cross Esset, you’re dead. She was in a few of my classes, had somewhat of a reputation for being a party girl, got on Crawford’s bad side—actually, they got on each other’s bad side—except Crawford is all bad side—end of story. Oh, and she’s a self telekinetic, if that makes any sense. She can levitate herself, fly for short distances. Specializes in hand to hand, and can use her ability to pack more of a punch. Nothing you need to worry about,” he smiled ironically. “She’d probably find a banana peel to slip on if she made an attempt on you.” He heard Shinjou Kurumi take a deep breath and let it out slow as they stepped out of the elevator.  
Yuuji put a hand on her shoulder, “Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing a lot more weird stuff in Shinjuku. Just roll with the insanity.”

Brad had parked the SUV in the loading space and was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Schuldig just looked like he had a major headache. Yuuji went around to put the two suitcases in the back.  
Aya tossed his sword on the floor of the middle row of seats with a clunk, then slid in and across.  
“What’s with the pretty boy?” Sylvia asked, her tone a cross between boredom and venom.  
Ignoring her, Yuuji got in and moved over beside Aya so Shinjou could get in.  
Aya turned to look at Linn over the back of the seat, eerily purple eyes taking in her classic Han beauty with the calculation of an alley cat whose rights to the local fish shop’s garbage was being threatened. He did not exactly lower his ears and hiss at her, but the thought was there. He turned back and put his seat belt on without comment.  
/What do you know, Sylvia just made another life-long not-friend,/ Schuldig looked at Brad with a slight smile.  
/I could care less,/ Brad put the car in gear and hit the gas.

@ @ @

They had landed in Tokyo’s Narita from Bern, Switzerland at an untimely 9 am the next morning, after a 10 hour flight and a 7 hour advance on jet lag. They had the use of a fourth floor Tokyo apartment ‘safe house’ made all the more safe because the whole Takatori thing was over. Schuldig smoothed over any questions in the minds of witnesses to Linn’s chain dragging struggling. That was the easy part.  
Living with her complaints for the time it was going to take Shinjuku to cycle around to a safe entry was another matter. By 11 am, Brad was drinking the Scotch so thoughtfully left by the previous agents. “Shut it!” he snapped seconds before she could open her mouth again, and took out his gun and laid it on the sideboard style bar. He swallowed half the double shot he’d poured himself and looked grimly at his watch.  
Sylvia slouched back on the living room sofa, her arms and legs crossed, chains clanking as she bounced her foot.  
“What the hell happened there anyway?” Sylvia asked petulantly. “Someone toss a bomb into a fault line?”  
“Someone else wanted to play God,” Schuldig answered, earning a nasty look from Brad.  
Sylvia looked at the red head speculatively, then said nothing, her eyes back on Crawford.  
“How did anyone survive,” Shinjou Kurumi wondered aloud in a hushed voice, at the window with a pair of binoculars Yuuji had passed to her. The city appeared to be under a dome shaped heat mirage. The towering skyscrapers the district had been famous for, built only there for Shinjuku’s presumed tectonic stability, were missing.  
“Not many did,” Brad said. “If you watch for hours on this side, you’ll see the event play out, from the initial time of the quake to the rebuilt city, to the quake again. Inside, time has moved on, miss-aligned with the outside. People have come in from outside, civilization of a sort has been restored. The people living in there have learned to cope with mutations and monsters. Scientific advances exist side by side with magic, and both combined. It is no longer a place exactly on Earth, more adjacent to it.”  
Sylvia made a derisive noise. “You always did love to hear yourself talk. What a load of garbage.”  
Brad picked up the gun and shot the sofa right next to her shoulder. The report was startlingly loud in the room, a ringing echo hanging in the air for a moment. “Oops. I missed. My bad,” he set the gun down with a precise click and sipped his drink.  
Kurumi had plastered her back against the wall in shock, still clutching the binoculars, staring at him.  
Yuuji laid a hand on her shoulder, rubbing his thumb gently on the bare skin of her collar bone, having surreptitiously licked it before touching her. “Everything is alright, just ignore him. Things in Shinjuku will be much more lively. Why don’t you keep watching, you can see the towers being rebuilt over the hours.”  
Kurumi looked alarmed still, but did as he said.  
Sylvia had watched this with interest. All along, Sarazawa had been soothing the girl down, and each time, she had seemed to be in a momentary daze at the sound of his voice. “What do you need him for when you’ve got a telepath?” she demanded sullenly of Brad.  
The glass smacked down next to the gun and Brad turned to look down at her. “Do you not learn your lessons?” he enunciated clearly, barely keeping the snarl out of his voice. “It’s none of your god damned business what I need and don’t need, but I will tell you why,” he widened his eyes in mock seriousness. “Just to shut you up once and for all.”  
“Brad,” Schuldig caught his arm, and glanced meaningfully at Aya, who stood at the other window, leaning on the frame, looking out.  
Brad looked at Yuuji, who returned the searching look with a slight frown of stress. He picked up his drink and finished it, and grabbed the bottle to pour another.  
“Go easy on that,” Yuuji said. “Naoe-kun was concerned about the timing and we have less than two hours to go.”  
“I’ll be sober by then,” Brad stated, looking at Schuldig. He reached up with his free hand to caress a gold flecked cheek and slid his hand into that copper hair to pull him in for a kiss, then dipped his head to nuzzle and kiss Schuldig’s throat.  
Schuldig came very close to spontaneous human combustion in that moment. The look in Brad’s eyes now was pure sex, and any doubts he had had over this particular assignment were disposed of in that instant. Sylvia could go to hell. Served her right for treating him like a dishrag. He put his arms around Brad’s shoulders and returned the kiss, with interest.  
Sylvia rolled her eyes and looked away in annoyance.  
Brad stepped back and taking Schuldig by the arm, lead him out of the room and down the short hall to a bedroom, shutting the door behind them.  
Aya looked over at Yuuji with a speculative frown.  
Yuuji did not need telepathy to tell him his timing was considered off and he was dirt for at least a few hours. Not that it was his fault for having not thought of killing time by skipping off to have sex in the middle of the morning. They were stuck with the prisoner and an impressionable young lady who had already been through a hell of a lot. Sometimes he missed being the irresponsible bastard Kudoh was.  
And found himself dying for a drink and a smoke, the smell of scotch faintly drifting in the ceiling fan wafted air.  
He fought it off by thinking about what it might take to track down who ever was intent on creating ‘talents’ of their own. Surely there were others out there in the world, the human race being what it was. If someone had managed to get hold of the old brain washing experiments from the Reich, why not the Ahnenerbe files? Like water, things got out, and the war’s end had not helped. People panicked, the leadership’s fatal insistence that the tide would turn had led to a last minute scramble, suicides had left vital tasks of secrecy scattered across broken streets by illiterate enemy soldiers seeking plunder. Anyone might have gotten hold of something, and lately the ‘rumors and myths’ of the Nazi effort had been being scrutinized a lot more carefully.  
“You’re brooding,” Aya was in front of him.  
Yuuji blinked, then smiled ruefully. “It’s part of the job. What are you seeing now, Shinjou-san?” he looked over at the girl.  
“It’s amazing,” she didn’t lower the binoculars. “It’s being rebuilt so fast.”  
“I wonder,” Yuuji mused, crossing his arms and pacing over to look out the window at the shimmering dome. “If the time factors are changing. May I have the glasses?”  
Kurumi handed them to him. He put them to his eyes and watched carefully. “I wish we had been able to record this.”  
“Excuse me!” Linn called a little too loudly. “I need to use the bathroom.” She held up her chained wrists. “A little help, please.”  
“Aya, take the lady to the bathroom,” Yuuji ordered, not lowering the binoculars. “She doesn’t need the chains off, but go in with her.”  
Aya scowled. “Who took her before?” he demanded in Japanese.  
“Schuldig,” was the answer.  
“Let him do it, then,” Aya went stubborn.  
“Ah, no, he’s busy at the moment, and if you want to keep things nice and quiet, you’ll leave it that way,” Yuuji turned to look at him.  
“You take her,” Aya retorted. “You’ve seen enough of it.”  
Yuuji raised an eyebrow slightly. “Let me get this straight. You’re sending me in there with a woman with her panties down around her ankles, in chains?”  
Aya rolled his eyes greatly and uncrossed his arms to stomp across to Linn. “Let’s go,” he said in his rough English.  
She got up, lugging her chains in an ungainly shuffle.  
“Remember, Linn,” Yuuji warned in German. “You have no idea what his talent is,” he grinned wickedly.  
She stopped and looked at Aya sharply, down, then up again. “I can guess,” she said nastily.  
Yuuji handed the binoculars back to Kurumi and rested his butt on the window sill, crossing his arms again to wait it out. You didn’t need to be a precog for this one. After all, Esset trained its agents well. She would do her best to escape.  
Five minutes later, there was a crash, and something glass shattered, followed by a wail.  
A door slammed and Aya stalked from the hall way with his usual imposed upon, sour faced look and sat down on the couch to pick up the out of date TV magazine and open it, done with the matter.  
Yuuji went to deal with the mess.  
Sylvia had tried something, alright. The shower door was shattered, the top supporting bar wrenched half down, and she was sitting on the floor with one hand clamped on a bloody wrist that was still dripping. The cuff was impeding her attempt to stop the flow.  
“I can’t stop it,” she said, her face a mix of anger and fear.  
Yuuji pulled out a handkerchief and grabbed a toothbrush off the counter, improvising a tourniquet just below her elbow.  
“What is he?” she hissed.  
Yuuji smiled at her, holding the tooth brush in place, “Un-categorized. Now let’s get you up. Did you have time to go, or was that a ruse?” he helped her to her feet from the broken glass and blood. The gray shift dress was splattered in a spray pattern before it had soaked her lap. Damn, she’d cut an artery.  
“Mind your own fucking business,” she snapped. She held up her wrist. “This isn’t going to work. I need a doctor,” she insisted.  
“You’re going to one,” he reminded her. “I’ll tie it up better in the kitchen. Aya, find the emergency kit!” he called down the hall in Japanese.  
“I’ll have nerve damage if it’s not treated immediately!” Sylvia raged at him.  
“Not really my problem,” Yuuji said. “You’ve been warned, practically every twenty minutes, but you just keep pushing your luck. I’m bandaging this up, and then I’m done.”  
She searched his face. “No one asked you to protect me from him.”  
“Wrong, Linn,” Yuuji said. “Traugott wants you delivered to Mephisto. Crawford asked me to protect you from him.”

 

 


	3. Chapter Three

In Absentia  
Chapter 3  
Brad straightened his tie and swept his eyes over Linn’s bandaged wrist and blood splattered dress where she once again sat on the sofa, gloomier than before. “That’s probably going to attract too much attention. If the mutants and vampires don’t show up, the plants will.”  
“You’re so full of shit,” Linn informed him, then looked at Schuldig, taking in the beige jeans and green unbuttoned shirt, his pale, muscular, lightly freckled chest showing through the opening. “I’ll bet he lets you top,” she sniped.  
Schuldig blushed angrily, but Brad reached over to tug a lock of copper flame, getting a glare for it, along with the telepath’s full attention. Brad gave him a restraining look. /She’s dead. Let it go./ Then he paused. /No, wait, did she ever let you…?/ he smiled teasingly.  
Schuldig slashed tiffany blue eyes at him, /Enjoy the memory. That was the last sex you get for a week./ He went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat left by the previous occupants. (Brad did not tell him it was no good. Contrary to opinion frequently expressed, he did not always ruin his volatile lover’s dramatic exits. They were part of the German’s charm.)  
“I usually prefer a shower after strenuous activity,” Brad said casually. “Too bad someone seems to have made a fool of them self.”  
“You might have seen it coming,” was Yuuji’s opinion. (He’d helped himself to a shot of the scotch just to get it off his back. He was sipping it slowly, letting small trickles of if tease his tongue, and fighting the ersatz memories that had been implanted. A sort of Buddhist meditation on the non-existence of ‘reality’ as perceived.)  
“I didn’t bother to look,” Brad buttoned his sleeve cuffs. He’d traded his white shirt for a pale blue one and freshened up as much as possible without having to clean up the mess of the broken shower door. One simply made do.  
“That girl,” Sylvia looked at Kurumi, who had finally fallen asleep curled up in an arm chair, her Iphone in her hand in her lap. “What’s up with her?”  
“Her business, not yours,” Brad said with a condescending smile. Irritating her was not quite as fun as picking on Schuldig, but she always had made a target of herself and habits were hard to break.  
“There is nothing in the cupboards but Nissen cup noodles and dried squid tentacles, the assholes,” Schuldig announced indignantly. “I hope they were the ones we killed.”  
“You won’t starve to death,” Brad assured him, walking over to pick up the binoculars and look out at the dome. Something was off about the skyline. He tensed, frowning. “I think we’d better leave now, or wait another six hours.”  
Yuuji came to stand beside him at the window. “I thought it was moving a bit faster.”  
“We’ll see what’s happened on the other side,” Brad set the binoculars down on the bar and grabbed his suit jacket off the back of a chair. “We can always come out and re-calibrate it.”  
“What if we run into ourselves from last time?” Schuldig worried, finally buttoning his shirt.  
“I doubt that will happen. And if it does, how interesting,” Brad grabbed up the keys to the rental SUV.”

@ @ @

The transition was strange this time; from the ruined railway bridge over the now water filled chasm, to the broken concrete of the station parking, they went from just after Noon daylight to full night. “Any chance your talent is working?” Yuuji had slowed to a stop, but left the engine running.  
In the second set of seats back, Brad shook his head, fighting off a wave of vertigo induced nausea. The towers were there, so at least they were in the right time. He hoped. This time he had not had to be shut down, but only because he had just let his mind go. “Not yet. It’s like a sped up video, too confusing. Give me a few minutes to adjust.” He had forced himself to just sit there and let it wash over him without seeing. It had brought back a childhood memory of doing just the same thing when a doctor had diagnosed him as severely autistic and his adoptive parents had diagnosed him as demon possessed. It left a sour taste in his mouth, and he stuffed the memory back into the depths of his mental closet.  
“At least this time I am expecting the endless screaming,” Schuldig said dully, looking pained. “I will never make another vegetarian joke again.” He put his hand on Brad’s thigh and the relief was instant on his features. He gave Brad a sympathetic look. “Are the pills helping?”  
He had taken a double dose of his migraine prescription when he’d gotten into the car. “Somewhat. Enough. As you say, we knew what we were up against this time.”  
“This is amazing,” the Shinjou girl was seated beside Schuldig, looking out the window. “But why didn’t they rebuild to the station back there?”  
“The zone around the borders is too unstable,” Brad answered. “They could rebuild, but then the anomaly will flex and destroy it again.”  
“Oh, dear, the night shift is on duty,” Yuuji murmured as something with a twelve foot wing span landed in front of them. The wings folding up as easily as a pocket umbrella, gone in a moment.  
“What the hell is that?” Sylvia exclaimed in horror.  
The now very human looking, if un-naturally gorgeous, creature walked over to the driver side and bracing an arm on the open window frame, leaned down to gaze at Yuuji with golden eyes. “Well, well,” she cooed past her fangs. “Sexy Sarazawa-san. Have you come for the annual blood drive?”  
“Officer Takada, tell me you’re joking,” he said, with just a little bit of a plea in his voice.  
She grinned ferally, then looked at the others, spending a few seconds longer on each face; a flirt and a vampire, yes, but all cop. She focused on Brad. “ Crawford-san. Now what?”  
“Business as usual, Officer,” Brad said calmly. “I don’t suppose you could direct us to Mephisto Hospital by a little less dangerous route this time?” he tried charming smile number two. The vampires here (and where the hell else, one wondered) seemed to have a culture of manners and politeness they clung to more obsessively than traditional Japanese.  
“The Doctor is expecting you?” she asked, her eyes again flicking to Sylvia Linn in the back seat, nostrils flaring slightly, no doubt at the smell of dried blood.  
Brad looked into her eyes, going for sincerity, despite the legendary warnings. “Yes,” he lied blithely, his racing heartrate explained away by the transit through the zone. At least he hoped Traugott had some connection with her origin.  
Takada looked as if she did not believe a word of it, but straightened up and sighted along her pointed finger. “Three blocks that way, then follow the signs. It’s been quiet lately, but watch the taped and fenced off area. We’ve had a few tremblors recently. It happens around the anniversary,” she looked back at Yuuji, pupils and smile widening again.  
“By the way,” Brad leaned over to look up at her as her wings started to spread, causing her to pause. “How long has it been since we were here before?”  
Her head tilted as she did the math. “A good three years now, come to think of it,” her eyes shifted to the driver’s window. “When your business is done, perhaps we can go out for a drink before you leave. Sarazawa-san.” She added with a teasing little lick of her lips. Then was gone, straight up in a powerful snap of her huge wings.  
“Pig,” Aya snapped at him.  
“What the hell did I do?” Yuuji demanded in protest, putting the SUV back in drive. “That police woman was harassing me; you’re all witnesses!”  
Schuldig laughed.  
“Vampires?” Sylvia said, the shiver in her body obvious in her tone. “You weren’t shitting me? Vampires?”  
“Oh, shut up,” Brad ordered. “You’re going to be seeing a lot more than just vampires in here.”

Somehow they made it to the hospital parking lot without being attacked, the four experienced passengers doing their best to hide their nervous alertness from the two ‘newbs’. As they got out of the SUV, an ear wrenching, inhuman scream came from overhead, freezing everyone’s blood.  
Something splattered nearby.  
“Fucking pterodactyls!” An ambulance driver having a smoking break tossed down his half smoked butt and ground it out on the concrete. Opening the cab of the ambulance, he took out a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle. He started cleaning a large mess off the windshield, swearing under his breath.  
Sylvia was staring upward, half falling over as Brad grabbed her by the undamaged wrist and lead her clanking in her chains toward the hospital entrance. “Pterre—pterre…” she gibbered.  
“They’re real,” Shinjou Kurumi said, surprised. “But—where did they come from?”  
“I’m sure someone will explain it all to you later,” Brad said. “But first let’s just get inside before another one decides to express its opinion. Pull yourself together and get in there,” he ordered Sylvia brutally.

@ @ @

When Mephisto took over, the main entrance to what had been the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building was remodeled to resemble a combination of hotel and hospital lobby, luxurious utility. Gilded tile mosaics resembling the artist Klimpt’s work depicted the four seasons along the walls. The reception desk was now expanded for Admittance. Occupying a large amount of one corner next to the banks of elevators, a water fall planted with bamboo, ferns and iris, along with some exotic orchids, burbled soothingly. A scattering of arm chair groupings through out the huge three story room held mostly ambulatory patients and family members who had come with them.  
Kurumi, seeing the nightmarishly disfiguring mutations and wounds people were suffering from, swallowed hard. “These poor people.”  
“Mister Crawford,” a pale ash-blonde woman in a traditional white shirt dress style nurse outfit strode up to them, a head nurse’s banded cap, a metal file case in the crook of one arm. “Shinjou-san, Doctor is most interested in meeting you. Take her up to the Doctor’s office,” she told another nurse who could be her very twin, but wore a plain white cap.  
This nurse smiled at Kurumi with the exact same smile and indicated the way they were to go, toward a bank of elevators.  
“You’ll be fine,” Yuuji told her. “Make your parents proud.”  
She smiled and nodded bravely, then went with the nurse to the elevators.  
“You’re horrible,” Brad told Yuuji. “I shudder to think of how they would have used you in the old regime.  
Yuuji just smiled and shrugged slightly.  
The Head Nurse smiled pleasantly at Crawford. “Doctor would like to examine you in his office,” she opened the file clipboard she carried. “I believe it has been a little over four weeks in your time. Just in time for a check up. Have you been regular? No constipation or straining?”  
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he droned as Sylvia smirked at him. “Are you in contact with Traugott?”  
She smiled at him with that viciously teasing little smile. “Who?”  
Brad frowned at her, eyes narrowing.  
She looked mockingly sympathetic. “You still have no sense of humor. Perhaps Doctor can transplant one for you. No miracle is beyond him,” she looked at Sylvia Linn and spoke in German, and in the voice of the woman who had caught her in the Chancellor’s office. “Hello again, Frau Linn. You’ll find us a little more adroit at containing troublesome individuals here at Mephisto. Orderlies!” she called sharply in Japanese, and two rather muscular Japanese men in blue scrubs came over. “Escort this patient to a secure room. See to that wrist.”  
They grabbed Sylvia, leading her off at a good pace, chains rattling. “I’ll kill you, Crawford!” she yelled over her shoulder. “I’ll kill all of you!”  
Nurse clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Psych ward will have their hands full.” She looked at the remaining four men. “Doctor will be available in about forty-five minutes, Mr. Crawford. You remember your way to the cafeteria and inpatient waiting rooms? Just ask if you get lost. Fujimiya Ran, your sister has been informed of your arrival. She’ll be off duty in five minutes. She will meet you for supper in the cafeteria.”  
“Nurse,” Brad said as she was about to go back to her station. “What if I don’t want to be examined?”  
She turned back to smile at him. “You don’t want to disappoint Doctor Mephisto. He tends to take it badly.”  
Brad sighed in irritation. “We might as well wait in the cafeteria, then.”  
Schuldig looked stressed out, but kept his hands in his jacket pockets. Yuuji just looked bored. Aya, now relegated back to ‘Ran’ looked apprehensive. They followed Brad to the smell of coffee and cooking wafting through the hallways.  
“Food,” Schuldig said, perking up. “I’m starved.” He went to look at the menu over the steam counter.  
“Lets hope he stays away from the sushi. I hear it fights back,” Yuuji made a lame joke, at Brad’s elbow to the coffee counter. They ordered two plain dark roast and doctored them, then took their cups to an open table.  
“Ran-nichan!”  
Ran looked around and was open mouthed stunned to see his sister had grown up. She had somehow caught up with the years she had not aged. “Nichan!” she called again across the mildly crowded room, pointing to a chair. “Over here!”  
Immediately shy at being called out in public, he ducked his head, hiding behind his fringe, reduced again to an awkward gangly fifteen year old. People were staring, and he had an idea why. They wanted to see the freakish brother of the prettiest girl in the whole room.  
Yuuji had turned as he was about to sit down to watch him slope over to the indicated chair with his sister.  
“He honestly thinks he’s a freak,” Schuldig set his coffee down and licked the milk foam off his upper lip. “Which he is, but seriously lacking in self esteem.”  
“Knock it off, Shuu,” Yuuji told him, sitting down. “I don’t need a play by play of my relationship from you.”  
“My bad,” the red head said without a bit of remorse. “I always think everyone is as curious as me, since everyone always asks me.” He dug into a piece of cheese cake he had decided on for ‘lunch’.  
“No one asked you this time, you tattle tale,” Brad informed him. “So, now we wait.”  
“Why, honestly?” Schuldig looked across the table at him. “We dropped off the women, now let’s go.”  
“I told you,” Brad said. “I want information Mephisto has access to. So we wait. Besides, if we go back at the wrong time, we might not get back anywhere near the time we left.”  
“Naoe’s figures are off,” Yuuji said. “You saw the time change. And it’s been three years?” he added with some stress showing.  
Brad looked at him. “What does it matter? We get back a few days or a month from when we left, it’s no different from any other mission.”  
“The difference is something is very wrong,” Yuuji insisted. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.”  
Brad shrugged. “Little too late now to give into paranoia, Sarazawa. Besides, what was it you told me? This is how the rest of the world lives, not knowing what will happen the next minute.” His cold golden brown eyes were unemotional depths.  
Then he sharply kicked Schuldig under the table.  
The redhead’s eyes went wide. He frowned, and put his coffee cup to his lips.  
Yuuji looked at him, then back at Brad suspiciously.  
Brad smiled innocently.  
Yuuji narrowed his eyes at him. “Chaos,” he said, almost under his breath.  
“To chaos,” Brad raised his coffee mug in a mock toast.  
“Gott help us all,” Schuldig said over the rim of his.

@ @ @

Brad hesitated, a streak of the old stubborn hate for authority rising up, and opened the door to Mephisto’s office. The doctor was just hanging up his cloak, and Brad was surprised to see that under the voluminous folds was a lean, athletic body. He was clad in a red shirt and slim black slacks over dress half boots. The effect was much more masculine and Brad had to kick down a thought of attraction and slap the mental trap door on it. “Is this really necessary?”  
“You’re not very good with weakness, are you?” the doctor said calmly, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves. “It will only take a moment. Remove your jacket and unbutton your shirt.”  
Brad did not want to, but submitted. “Fujimiya’s sister looks well,” he tried to take his mind off his circumstances as Mephisto stepped around behind him.  
“A strange case,” Mephisto ran cold fingertips along Brad’s flank and the next moment he was up to his wrist where the monster had gouged out a good chunk of Brad’s guts. “Hold still,” the richly mellow voice not far from his ear warned in that distracted medical way. “You have excellent muscle definition and it’s quite crowded in here.”  
Brad inhaled a hiss of air and winced, then the probing was done. He shuddered, not wanting to even think about how it had looked the first time he had seen that hand actually disappear into his side. This time, he had not looked.  
“Excellent. You’re fully healed. No interfering scar tissue, no signs of genetic contamination, and your liver is fine,” Mephisto went to the sink to wash his hands.  
“But emotionally traumatized for life,” Brad grumbled, daring now to look at his side to make sure there was no gaping hole there. Christ, it had felt awful!  
“Would you rather be cut up with knives and sewn up like a roast?” The doctor dried his hands on a fluffy white towel, watching him curiously.  
“Call me old fashioned,” Brad said honestly.  
Mephisto smiled a little, dropping the towel into a silver metal bin beside the sink and walking over to sit down at his rather grand desk. “Cursory examination shows the Linn woman has the same enhanced blood flow to the brain. I take it she comes as an offering.”  
Brad finished resettling his clothing and sat in one of the chairs before the desk. “One perhaps not as useful as the Shinjou girl,” was his opinion. “But Traugott insisted on our bringing her to you.”  
“All knowledge is useful,” Mephisto settled back a little more into his chair and braced his chin with the thumb and fingers of his right hand, elbow on the chair’s arm. “In return for what?”  
Brad began carefully, having an idea that what he was asking for was against all the rules, even in here. “We found a man who had been surgically implanted with a device that enhanced what we think was a very mild ability of telepathy. With this implant, he was able to impose un-characteristic emotional upheavals and there by, disturbingly altered thinking, on some of our people. Unfortunately, he and the implant was destroyed in the process of putting an end to the interference. I haven’t been able to trace him back to his masters, and yet someone had the money to command neurosurgery skills for what was obviously a sketchy experimental procedure. We only have a suspicion that it was one of a number of government backed military groups.”  
“I would have preferred you bring the man to me, dead or alive. I can hardly diagnose at this stage,” Mephisto said. “Baring the medical aspect, what do you think I can do for you in this matter?”  
“Shinjuku gets news from the outside world, does it not? And you are what, twelve years from the event? Det. Kabane mentioned you even get tourists from the future.”  
“It is now fifteen years from the devastation of the quake,” Mephisto corrected mildly.  
Brad felt icy fingers of a different kind invading his insides. “Fifteen?” he stated. Nagi’s calculations were now way off.  
Mephisto nodded once. “My best guess is that with each temblor, we become more disjointed from original time.” He paused thoughtfully. “And the future tourists ceased coming last year.” His deep space black eyes met Brad’s again.  
Brad shifted closer to the edge of his chair. “Tell me, have you any news or records about a medical group known as Galea? Have they succeed in making high level talents by surgical implants?”  
Mephisto’s hand strayed to the ornately bound book on the corner of his desk. “Will a yes or no answer satisfy you?” he asked gravely.  
Brad sensed a glitch. Something screamed ‘change course’ in his mind. “No,” he said, making up his mind. “Not to that question. To this one. Does Esset survive?”  
Mephisto’s expression of eternal calm did not change. “Yes, your organization survives.”  
Brad thought about this. Esset survived, fifteen years into the future. But in what form? In who’s hands? He stood up. “Thank you, Doctor Mephisto.”  
“You’re a strange mix of devil and angel, you know,” Mephisto said with a light smile. “On the one hand, you bring us a potential cure for hundreds of mutations, and on the other, a woman who merely annoys you to be turned over for medical experimentation.”  
“Just wait until you find out how annoying she can be,” Brad’s said meanly.

@ @ @

“Fifteen years?” Ran said. She looked very much like their mother (as did he). With her dark purple toned black hair done up in a bun, blue violet eyes and lean body, she had only gotten more pretty (like her bother). She wore blue scrubs, and her name tag indicated she was a therapist.  
“Its funny to think that we’re the same age now,” she made wide eyes at him across the table, two plates of chicken curry and rice between them.  
Ran was more concerned with the whole time factor thing in their moving back and forth. Fifteen years? Last time it had been twelve. How would that have changed the math Naoe did? He tried to focus on his sister, not to let her know he was worried about something else. “So how are you?”  
“Fine, busy. I like the work here. They train by apprentice, so no years of school,” she smiled. “How are you?” she asked pointedly. “How is that boyfriend of yours treating you? I see you still have the same one.” She glanced over at the table Yuuji sat at.  
Ran frowned. “Do you think I’d run around from man to man just because I’m gay?” he asked, trying not to sound mad about it.  
She laughed lightly. “No, it’s just that he looks like a lot of trouble. I would never figure you for the flashy bad boy type, Ni-chan. You’re too shy.”  
He blushed, then looked over at Yuuji. “I’m glad you’re happy here, Aya-chan,” the word was strange in his mouth.  
“But what are you doing now?” she asked. “I realize it’s only been a few weeks for you, but what are you doing out there in the world?”  
He told her about the traveling, and the flower shop in London. “Shinjou-san’s adoptive parents might not have been ethical people, but they did their best by her. She’s better off here than in a world where she would have to either hide her medical condition, or be used to experiment on. Take good care of her, she is a nice girl.”  
“I’m sure we will be friends,” Aya smiled.  
Ran frowned. “There was a guy here; ash white skin, long white grey hair, yellow eyes, sort of weird. You know him?”  
She frowned a little, then nodded as the penny dropped. “Soyougi-kun, I think you mean? Mephisto-sensei’s---erm---sort of valet, body guard, student.”  
He watched her for signs of any emotional connection, and saw none. “’Erm’?”  
She gave him an arch look. “Lets just say he worships the ground Sensei walks on. And Sensei likes to keep him busy.”  
“Ah,” Ran said.  
“Good curry, isn’t it?” she said, changing the subject, and putting a spoonful in her mouth.  
“Mmm,” he nodded, busy with a mouthful of his own.

@ @ @

Schuldig and Yuuji were loitering in the hallway outside the Doctor’s office. Brad walked over to the red head, immediately aware of how much pain the man was in and linked his arm in Schuldig’s. He looked at Yuuji. “What ever is coming our way, Esset survives. That was the only question I dared ask. In fifteen years of our time, Esset survives.”  
“But will we get back to our time?” Yuuji asked grimly.  
“I may have jumped the gun when we came in, or we came in too late, but I do know this, if we leave 24 hours to the minute of coming in, we should be able to get back to our own time.”  
“12:49 Tokyo normal,” Yuuji said. “Paranoia, got a love it. That and a watch that isn’t connected to the internet. If we had been relying on our phones we would have been screwed.” He held up his phone. It said 7:28 pm.  
“What about 12 hours difference?” Schuldig asked, a little plea hidden in his nasal tones.  
“No,” Yuuji stated. “Coming in and out the same time is the only safe bet. We should have brought the kid with us, Brad.”  
“Will you stop freaking out?” Brad asked him seriously.  
“You’re talking to a guy here who lost two years of his life,” Yuuji insisted. “My parents had to deal with that. You had to deal with that.”  
“Nurse!” Brad raised his voice.  
“Mr. Crawford, we have work to do here,” the intercom said curtly. “You are not admitted to this hospital. However we can arrange for that,” the voice cheered up a little.  
“Actually, it’s more to your advantage to answer my questions and be rid of us,” he reasoned.  
“Ask away, then,” she said pertly.  
“Ask Traugott what time we come back to the normal world, supposing that we have in fact, already returned.”  
“That information is forbidden,” she stated.  
“Oh come on,” he said in frustration. “What’s the harm in our knowing if we’re going to know when we get out anyway?”  
“You’re arguing with the ceiling,” Schuldig murmured to him, and got a harsh look. He shut up.  
“You of all people should know that what ever you do with that information will change the answer. Now if you don’t mind, I have more dangerous lunatics to deal with at the moment.” Again with the fake hanging up ‘snap’ of the intercom.  
“More dangerous lunatics,” Schuldig said. “It just insulted us again.”  
Brad shoved his hair back from his forehead and re-sorted his thinking. “Alright, we check into the hotel for a night and get to hell out of here tomorrow night at 12:49 our time.”  
“Well thank goodness this day is over, because I did not like the way it was going at all,” Schuldig said. “We check into the hotel, we stay there until it’s time to leave, right?”  
Brad looked at him, considering the options. His head was now splitting right down the middle. “Alright,” he looked at Yuuji. “Anything comes up, you and Fujimiya are less affected, deal with it. Unless you can completely avoid it. I don’t want anything to delay our getting back to our own time.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how Chapter 3 got left as a draft. My apologies for throwing everything out of synch! O_o;;

Brad undid his tie and looked around the hotel bedroom. Sometimes he faced the fact that most of his life had now been spent in transitory rooms. Dorm, then hotels and safe houses. He wondered if there was something wrong with him that he did not care for the lack of a place to call home. The whole of Tokyo city had felt like home. There it had been ‘safe’, given his lifestyle, to go to the same restaurants, the same gyms, the same dry cleaners. With enough money, a man didn’t need anything else in Japan.  
“Of course being spoiled to this lifestyle has a lot to do with it,” Schuldig commented. “Frankly, I could do with another flat. It might not have been much, but it was nice to wake up in the morning to find the coffee maker in the same place and not have to turn around twice to find the refrigerator, or that it has a coin lock on it, and everything inside is a surprise. Not always a useful one.”  
Brad draped his shirt over the back of a chair. “Every hotel is the same. Bland luxury, or just bland. Either way, what matters is who is with you in it.”  
Schuldig eyed him warily. “Now what?” he asked dully.  
Brad stepped around to the end of the bed to take him by the upper arms and look into his eyes. “Technically, that week might be up.” He smiled ruefully.  
“Technically, I am still mad at you,” the red head sulked at him.  
Brad leaned in to kiss him on the tip of his nose. “No, you’re not.”  
“I will need more convincing than that,” Schuldig stated.  
Brad arched and eye brow and kissed him on the forehead, then the cheek bones. “Still mad?”  
“Raging,” Schuldig insisted calmly. “This is going to take a lot of angry make up sex to fix.”  
Brad kissed him lightly on the lips, then ran his left hand up into his lover’s hair and pulled him closer for a much more serious kiss. “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

@ @ @

Nagi opened his laptop on the desk he had been assigned in the school Chancellor’s office and scrolled to his links for the news in Japan.  
The government had decided to make the best of things, building a viewing platform to keep the tourists out of the neighborhoods, and a mesh fence in the river to keep boats out of the chasm zone. Construction had begun with some very odd protests from the Americans, who were still determined to break the time barrier and restore things to normal. Having no proof that dropping another huge bomb would do anything of the sort, the prime minister had simply told them to mind their own business and spend their time better on their problems; to wit, their escalating race war. That sent the American Ambassador off in a snit.  
“What will happen will happen without your watching it constantly,” Traugott said, dumping a pile of musty, dirty old files on the desk and stripping off a pair of nitrile gloves. “I don’t know what that man was thinking, leaving all this laying around when it could have been encrypted decades ago.”  
“Encrypted and hacked into,” Nagi grumbled, looking at the pile of work in dismay.  
“Not if they are not connected to the internet,” she said primly. “And properly encrypted. Everything here is organized by date and subject. All you need to do is type them in to proper files. We will destroy the originals when I have checked for accuracy.”  
He looked up at her, sensing something by her tone. He was working on the theory that the human it inhabited was influencing the alien’s behavior. Maybe the real Gudrun Traugott, office clerk, was fighting her way back to the surface. He flicked through the stack of files. With a vengeance. “The question is, why bother? Who would want all this old crap? We’re talking ancient history here.” He winced at the black mold staining his fingers.  
“He who ignores the past has already lost the future,” she quoted at him. “The sooner you start to work, the sooner the work will be done,” She smiled coolly and went back to what she had been doing in the now file piled room that had been the Chancellor’s office. Chancellor Holzweber no longer came in to work any more. The council was talking about putting him out to grass. Nagi was not sure what that meant, now that the Elders were gone. Was he being retired—or literally being used to fertilize the lawn?  
When was Brad going to come back and rescue him from this insanity? And when he did come back, he was going to smack him against the wall a few times, too, he thought with evil eyes.  
“Well, ‘arbeit macht frei’. Might as well get busy.” He took up the top file and opened it, then groaned. The top sheet was typed, but there were notes all over it in the old Germanic writing style and with a god damned fountain pen. The letters had blobbed together as the ink stained into the paper over time’s abuse, and words had to be sorted by context; never a good thing with German.  
“Oh shit,” he said aloud, finally sorting out what the signature at the bottom of the page was.  
Traugott brought in another two foot tall stack and plunked them on the desk.  
“Do you realize what these are?” he looked up at her, wide eyed.  
“Yes,” she said, “Approved first drafts,” and went back into the other office.  
“Oh, shit,” Nagi murmured. Then he sighed and put the contents of the first folder in the stand.

@ @ @

Yuuji was giving a smoking orderly the evil eye when Aya found him on a hospital staff patio. “What were you thinking?” he asked with quiet suspicion.  
Yuuji took his hand off his lethal watch and looked innocent. “Nothing. I just came out for a little fresh air.”  
“What fresh air?” Aya waved his hand in the air and shot the orderly a death glare. The man tossed down his half smoked butt, ground it out under a foot, and retreated back inside the hospital. Shinjuku-ites had a heightened sense of self preservation built in by now. Aya looked at Yuuji. “You quit, remember? You never smoked in the first place.”  
Yuuji smiled ruefully, then picked up one of Aya’s silly side locks of burgundy hair, wrapping it around his finger and giving it a little tug. “Take my mind off the craving?”  
Aya tipped his head back and looked at him through his lashes, “My sister thinks you’re the high maintenance type.”  
“Does she? And where did she get this worldly opinion from?” Yuuji asked with another little tug.  
“I have no idea, but isn’t it amazing how accurate she is?”  
“I am not high maintenance. I maintain myself,” he added, a little insulted.  
Aya put his arms around his shoulders and kissed him, snuggling his pelvis up against Yuuji’s.  
Somewhere between loosing his mind and sanity, sanity won. “Aya, I don’t think it’s safe around here to crash in the bushes,” Yuuji was having a hard time breathing without panting, and once again, his pants were way too tight. “We need to get a room. A hotel room,” he added. “With a bed. And a door.”  
Aya made one of those weird little noises that drove Yuuji nuts in bed and did not let go.  
“Okay, so dry humping on a hospital patio could work,” Yuuji admitted and yanked Aya’s hips closer.  
“Bench,” Aya pushed him away after a heated few minutes, walking over to a bench out of the light from the windows. He straddled it then laid down and undid his jeans, letting his decidedly hardened cock out.  
Yuuji obliged him, sitting down on the end of the bench and pulling Aya’s legs over his thighs, then bent forward to take his cock in his mouth. Aya moaned and thrust up.  
The eroticism of the moment did its work, Aya’s enjoyment only adding to the torture of the lust he had already incited. When Aya had peaked at last, Yuuji moved up to shove his own cock into the gap between Aya’s jeans and his balls, and soaked Aya’s underwear with his cum while kissing him frantically. Aya came again, gasping for air.  
Yuuji lay there on him, recovering as much as he could. “Damn, now I really could use a cigarette,” he complained.  
“Maybe it’s because you tried to fuck me like a woman,” Aya thumped him on the shoulder meanly.  
“Well when you lay there and whimper like that, what the hell?” Yuuji defended himself. “You weren’t complaining a few seconds ago.”  
“Next time you bang my anus, stick it in,” Aya hissed and shoved him off.  
“At that angle and with your pants on?” Yuuji complained, sitting up. “I got news for you. This is a penis, not a tentacle.” He pointed to said article, which in the process of wilting, gave a little flail rather like.  
Aya put both hands over his mouth to stifle a giggle, then fell over on the bench laughing.  
“We need to get to hell out of this place, it’s affecting your mind,” Yuuji stuffed his now useless junk back into his own pants and zipped up. “Try not to look too conspicuous with those wet pants.”  
Aya just kept laughing at him.

@ @ @

In the hotel suite’s bathroom in the morning, Brad kissed Schuldig on the shoulder, dripping water from his shower wet hair onto the creamy, lightly freckled skin. “Why don’t you just get rid of that for good?”  
“Because I like shaving,” the red head said, swishing the foam off his safety razor in the hot water in the sink. “It’s one of the few manly things a man has left.”  
“Have you seen some of these women lately? Unibrows and mustaches. And mind you, that’s outside this pocket of insanity.”  
Schuldig frowned. “You just have to ruin everything, don’t you?” he scraped another strip of foam and stubble off. “Just because you’re too lazy to shave…”  
“Waste of time,” Brad said. “And how manly is getting a Brazilian wax?” he laughed softly, tracing bare skin between scrotum and thigh with a light fingertip.  
“Stop tickling!” Schuldig glared at him in the mirror. “Listen you, what is it with you anyway? You like men with long hair, you like bare faces, you like soft hands. Tell me again why you are Gay?” he swished the razor in the water again and made ‘the shaving face’ so he could get at the space under his nose.  
Brad slid an arm around his waist and bit him on the back of the neck for an answer, running his other hand up and down a lean and muscular thigh and hip. “Because I like men.”  
“I’m shaving!” Schuldig protested, checking to see that he had not cut himself.  
“Why are you so worried about your preferences?” Brad murmured into his ear, clasping his balls lovingly.  
Schuldig frowned. “Esset has laws.”  
“You know they’ve always overlooked that one,” Brad’s hand went back to that thigh. “A slap on the wrist, an order to produce children, nothing serious as long as everyone toes the line when it comes to orders.”  
“Have they? Or maybe they’ve just put up with me all this time because the Elders wanted me to keep an eye on you.”  
“You need to take the crap Sylvia Linn told you off replay in your head,” Brad stated. “You double think, and double think and judge yourself too harshly by what other people are thinking. What should be most important to you is what I am thinking.”  
Schuldig turned to look at him, his face still half covered in shaving cream that was going flat. “That is either the most romantic thing you ever said to me or the most incredibly narcissistic. Do you know why I love you?” he asked quietly.  
“No,” Brad humored him.  
“Because you really don’t give a damned what other people think,” Schuldig said honestly, and kissed him. Then he wiped the shaving cream off one side of Brad’s cheek and got back on task. “So, what do we do to kill time today?”  
“Absolutely nothing,” Brad said. “No going outside, no getting caught up in any thing, no getting caught by anything, we just stay inside. We can play cards or watch TV or just stare out the window at the pterodactyls, but there is no way we are going to end up involved in some Shinjuku mess.”  
“Boring,” Schuldig said, washing his face.  
“Better boring than a massive headache,” Brad reminded him.  
“There is that. I suppose you have a deck of cards,” the red head looked at him.  
“Room service,” Brad said.  
“Strip poker?” Schuldig smirked.  
Brad looked at him seriously. “For that you would have to put some clothes on.”  
“You always cheat anyway, why bother?” Schuldig shrugged.  
“I do not, you’re just a lousy bluffer,” Brad smacked him on the bare ass.

@ @ @

Herr Griefeldt looked over the graduating class. Rosencruez was a small school; its senior class fit in the auditorium with room for family and sponsors. The class sat In the center of the room, rows of uniforms pressed and shined, hats set just so; faces pale and dark smudges under their eyes from finals; hope on their young faces—at least a few of them sleeping with their eyes open.  
He tapped sharply on the microphone, and saw his suspects jump and blink at the gunfire-like report. “I will not bore you with ridiculous stories and platitudes about how bright your future will be and how special you are,” he said quietly into the microphone. “We are Rosencruez. We don’t need that shit.”  
Wary of being shot after all, snickers were muffled, though there was some minor coughing, cheek biting and manfully blank face making, even among the young women.  
“Instead, we will play for you (in its entirety) one of the most inspirational speeches of the man who made this little chicken ranch into the mightiest army the world has known!” he raised his voice into a martial shout.  
“Oh gott, not Himmler,” someone whispered.  
Typical Esset. Even graduation had to be torture, Nagi thought.

@ @ @

Yuuji plucked the lid off the chaffing dish on the room service cart. Okay, nothing blinked back at him. Eggs, bacon, sausage, shredded potatoes golden browned, pancakes; the full ‘American’ breakfast. They did the English, too but he had not felt up to fish this morning.  
“Come back to bed,” Aya half cooed, half moaned. “My feet are cold.”  
“Put the blankets over them,” he loaded up a plate.  
“Bring me food,” Aya pleaded.  
“Get up and get your own, you sex fiend.” Yuuji sat down and sipped his coffee, then started stuffing his face. He was starved. Aya could suck the life out of a rock.  
Aya padded out in his socks, shoving sweaty hair out of his face and sitting down to make puppy eyes at Yuuji across the table.  
“Did someone put something in your drink last night?” Yuuji asked him seriously.  
“Considering what your talent is, shut the fuck up,” Aya told him and poured himself a cup of coffee.  
Yuuji raised a brow. “You don’t like coffee, Aya.”  
“I never said I didn’t like it, I just don’t drink it that much,” he sipped it, made a face and grabbed the sugar bowl. “How many hours left?”  
Yuuji looked at his watch and did the math. “A little over ten, but we have to be ready half an hour early.” And that meant sitting there in the street long enough to become a target in this place. He hoped Officer Takada would not expect a bribe.  
“So, that means 9 more hours of sex,” Aya grinned at him over the coffee mug’s rim.  
Horrified, Yuuji gave him a stern look. “What about your katana exercises?”  
“What about them?” Aya growled, suddenly dangerous.  
“And a shower,” Yuuji added. He had managed to escape early enough to get one before ordering breakfast.  
“I don’t want to wash you off me, it makes me feel—,” Aya shivered with delight.  
“It makes you smell—,” Yuuji shuddered and made a mockingly disgusted face.  
Aya frowned at him.  
Yuuji bared his teeth in a cheesy grin.  
“If you want shower sex, just say so,” Aya sipped his coffee.  
Yuuji groaned and remembered just in time not to face down into his breakfast to bang his head on the table.

@ @ @

“Herr Reichsführer,” Traugott put the file down in front of Griefeldt. “The status reports from Gruppenführer Hertzheim’s repatriation project.”  
He looked the top page over, noting the numbers. “Good, good. Who would have thought it would be so easy. Give them their blasted homeland and then scare them into it,” he chuckled.  
“Well, they did ask for it,” Traugott said archly.  
“The amusing part is the world will thank us for it this time.” He slapped the file shut and picked up the remote to the television on the wall, and the phone from its charging cradle. He scrolled to and hit a quick dial number, then flicked through the channels for a news report while the call went through. “Hertzheim, old boy, good work. Yes, I know you are doing nothing, and doing it quite well!” he laughed. “I’m watching the news right now.” “Our ancestors must be wishing they had more than dust to kick themselves with for not thinking of it first.” “Yes, yes, allow the construction supplies to go through. If they want another wall, let them build it. Three, four, what ever makes them feel safe.” “DNA testing? Mein gott, they have a nerve, don’t they? That will teach them to chose so small a land when they write their damned holy book. Any who don’t get in will be dealt with later. We will see how loyal they are to their agenda when they realize they are being discriminated against by their own ‘race’, the conniving rats.”  
Traugott waited patiently.  
“Of course. We will be ready. Get a dart board or something, play online chess,” he laughed and hung up after the customary salutation. He glanced up at the blond woman standing there. “Is there something more, Fraulein?”  
“Shinjouku,” Traugott said, one other folder still in her hands. “No word yet.”  
He frowned slightly, then sighed. “Ah well.”  
“However, the Americans want to send in scientists,” she laid the folder down. “They are claiming the Japanese are concealing something dangerous, as usual.”  
“Have Obergruppenführer Hashizume convince the Japanese Diet to refuse them access. Based on their escalating civil war they keep denying exists. We don’t want to be the subject of Ami political activists trying to drag Japan in on what ever side,” he made a sour face. “Tell him to step up the propaganda, too. The Amis are refusing to call it what it is, a civil war. I want him to go back through the press files and use their own statements against them. Suggest that the American government leaders be removed by force for the sake of democracy, UE troops sent in, crap like that.”  
“Yes, Reichsführer,” she said with a smile.

@ @ @

Brad had been surprised to be allowed to order a newspaper from room service and was vastly entertained. The Mayor’s insane wife had given birth to a son; unfortunately the Mayor’s participation in the event was questioned, given that the child had two huge black eyes like an alien parody and purple skin.  
“Listen to this; `the pterodactyl population is expected to double in the next year if Animal Control can not find a way to discourage the reptiles from swarming around the dimensional vortex they travel through. Tagging has proven pterodactyls hatched in Shinjuku have returned to mate and raise their young here, rather than in their own era. An effort has been made to contain the vortex, but the flying reptiles tear down the nets in order to return to Shinjuku’s more convivial environment.’”  
Schuldig rolled his eyes. “Why don’t they just shoot the damned things and make the environment un-convivial?” He went back to his phone call to room service. “Hallo, yes, I would like to order two prime rib dinners with new potatoes—and french green beans…”  
“Schuldig, that’s my credit card,” Brad warned.  
“Who cares? You will make that money in 15 years. Yes, and a 24 case of Lowenbrau. Well what do you have? Eugh, I suppose so, but you really should get Lowenbrau or some other pilsner not made in America. No, I don’t want Mexican or Korean beer, are you out of your mind?” he hung up angrily. Then he frowned. “Damn it, I want ice cream.” He reached for the cordless phone again.  
“You can order it later,” Brad said, checking out the want ads and for sale listings. “Oh this is outrageous. ’Three headed Alsatian puppies, six weeks, all shots, 2 million yen each.’”  
“I want a puppy!” Schuldig exclaimed.  
“Not if you intend to name him Cerebus, you don’t,” Brad regretted that impulse share.  
“Oh, stick a fucking crowbar in your wallet and buy me a puppy!” Schuldig snarled.  
Brad looked up at him. “Buy it yourself. You have a paycheck too, you know.”  
“Buy it for me. You never buy me anything. If you love someone, you buy them what ever they want,” he insisted.  
“What on earth do you intend to do with a three headed Alsatian? The fool thing will probably bark at itself all day long.”  
“I will name him Schatzie and take him for walks in the park and scare the crap out of all the little mame-inu in their silly little outfits.”  
“And use the little plastic bags to pick up dear Schatzie’s poop? And mop up the floor when you forget to take him out because we got caught in a gun fight and you were late getting back. Nagi will end up feeding him and walking him after a week and you know it.”  
Schuldig pouted.  
Brad looked at the paper again and smiled wickedly. “Here you are, two headed Dachshund puppies, 1.5 million yen.”  
“Long or short haired?” Schuldig dared to ask, still bitter about the Alsatian.  
“What is it about multi-headed dogs that makes you want one?” Brad asked.  
Schuldig thought about it. “Because they are there. And so cool!”  
“Not because you love dogs and have wanted one all your life?”  
“Exactly. Who wants a plain old boring normal dog, when you can have a seriously mutated dog?”  
“No,” Brad said, snapping the paper and turning the page.  
“Just for that, I am still not dressing for supper.”

@ @ @

“Nagi-kun, stop worrying,” Tot held up Rabbi-chan and made his little paws wave around to get Nagi’s attention. “They’ll come back.”  
He spasmed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, then looked out the viewing window again. The walkway allowed people to watch the city beyond the time barrier go through its endless cycle of destruction and rebirth. Most tourists thought it actually did that. Few knew or cared that the barrier itself was like a recording. He had given up on the physics of the thing. There were more immediate things to worry about.  
A scream rang out over the walk way, then some woman yelled in English “Stop him! Oh, God, please stop him!” on the lower viewing deck.  
Nonplused, Nagi watched as a man climbed over the second safety fence and ran for the final third one. People were nuts. Hence the barriers.  
The guy monkied up over the third one and yelled something, flinging himself into the time anomaly.  
The woman kept yelling some name and putting her hands over her mouth, sobbing.  
“Weirdos,” was Tot’s opinion.  
Nagi looked at his wrist watch. Well, it really wasn’t his, but one of Brad’s he had liberated. “Times up,” he sighed. “We’d better get back to work.”  
“Un,” Tot agreed, “Maybe tomorrow?”  
“Maybe,” he said, smoothing a lock of her candy cotton blue hair over her shoulder.  
“Mommy, that lady has a toy bunny,” some little kid announced to the world in English.  
“That’s not the only thing she has, Hon,” the mother looked critically at the young Japanese woman dressed like an antique french doll.  
Tot smiled and waved at her like a cartoon character. Nagi considered squeezing all the air out of her.  
“That man is a bad man, isn’t he, Mommy? He’s wearing that uniform.”  
The woman looked at Nagi now and her eyes popped as she realized from his expression he not only had heard them, but understood English. She grabbed her kid by the hand and hauled him off through the crowd.  
Nagi smirked and offered Tot his black clad arm to take, which she did, smiling up at him.

@ @ @

“When are you going to let me meet your parents?” Aya asked over supper. Once again, he had insisted on shrimp, anchovies and corn on his half of the pizza. Yuuji was trying not to notice.  
“With any luck, never,” Yuuji said.  
Aya’s eyes went wide. “What the hell do you mean, never?” he squawked.  
Yuuji finished chewing his mouthful of normal, sane Supreme style and swallowed. “Look, Aya, my parents are not—well they are not what most people would consider nice.” Wait, was that what was going on here? He was looking for someone that reminded him emotionally of his combined parental insanity? Gods that was so cliché. “My mother is a geneticist who specializes in fertility medicine. My father is the head of Esset’s Foreign Police and a Council Member. You want a pink triangle sewn on all your shirts and be tossed into a forced breeding program, go for it.”  
“Why is it okay for you to be Gay, then?” Aya asked flatly.  
“Because the Pater also specializes in total denial,” Yuuji had a mouthful of beer and waved the bottle in the air like a slate eraser. “Nothing I do could possibly be wrong.”  
“Is your father a ‘talent’?” Aya asked curiously.  
“No, he’s just that scary. Total old school. If he ever failed at anything, he would sepuku himself in a heartbeat.”  
“What about your mother?”  
“She’d dissect you, balls first.”  
Aya snorted. “No she wouldn’t.” He picked up another slice of his gross disgusting pizza and splashed it with soy sauce before biting into it.  
“You are not kissing me with that mouth until you wash it out,” Yuuji threatened.  
“I want to meet your parents,” Aya stated.  
“No, never, and that’s that. You are never coming out to my parents as my gay as fuck lover, you got that, Aya?” Yuuji pointed at him.  
“Try and stop me,” Aya said simply.  
Yuuji frowned. That could be suicide if he actually did try.

@ @ @

“Here goes nothing,” Yuuji said, starting the rented SUV. So far, they had waited for the appropriate time with not more interest from the locals than would have happened in any Tokyo neighborhood. Except for the rather large pterodactyl perched on a lamp post, that is. It kept watching them curiously and shifting from foot to foot on its stubby looking little legs.  
“It had better be nothing,” Schuldig said. “Well, step on the gas or something. We want out of here.”  
The crossing was rough as usual, the railway bridge being the only way in with a vehicle, and the crossed tracks a deterrent in itself.  
Schuldig took over outside the time barrier and was startled almost into losing control. “Just go,” he shouted. “Fast now! Head left, over the kerb and park on the street beyond this fence!”  
Yuuji did as he was told with as little trepidation affecting his driving as possible, but the new fencing on the other side was a shock. And the raised glass and steel platform, along with the armed guard booths that had just been ‘temporary’ before, now morphed into guard towers.  
There was an ambulance crew mopping up something gory near the barrier a few feet from where they had driven through. White uniformed guards with rifles stood in a mindful circle around the `accident`.  
“Just keep calm and let me do this,” Schuldig growled through clenched teeth.  
Yuuji finally pulled over and parked near a meter.  
Brad looked around. “Shit,” he stated succinctly.  
“Shit is right,” Schuldig glared at him.  
“What happened?” Aya asked, looking around, bewildered.  
A tall young Japanese man in a black uniform with silver piping and a red armband stalked up the car and yanked open the back passenger door on Brad’s side. “Well it’s about fucking time!” he stated, equal parts angry and relieved.  
Brad blinked up at him.  
“Nagi?” Schuldig said in disbelief.  
“Okay, we’re not supposed to wear that armband,” Yuuji said.  
“The hell we aren’t,” Nagi said with a proud smirk. “Welcome to the Fourth Reich.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that Schwarz is BAD. Esset is the continuation of the SS and crazy Nazi experiments in genetic breeding, and mucking about with the supernatural, as well as just plain being Nazies.
> 
> By the way, I have a book to recommend, from the Allies side. Someone ran with the Talent idea.  
> Kay Kenyon's "At the Table of Wolves". It amuses me greatly that one of the bad guys, Von RItter has that Talent of being irresistable. Hmm. Just not as charming.

Chapter 5

  
Esset had an Embassy in Tokyo now.  
An Embassy.  
Brad sat in an armchair, still confused and more than a little emotionally numbed. Despite the fact that it had been sunset an hour ago, it was now just after noon. The sun was bright outside the floor to ceiling windows. His mind was shrinking back from the five year load of data the timeline was throwing at him. Flashes came at him like lights on the night time freeway at high speed. He was getting a sick headache of the kind he had not felt since he was fourteen.  
One day. One reasonably quiet, relaxed day; nothing more than a self indulgent half weekend, and this happened? He was actually sitting in a building draped with the red, white and black flags. A portrait of Adolf Hitler hung on the wall. This had to be real. Maybe they had come out in an alternative dimension?  
He tried to put down the nausea, not think about it, ignore the flashes. He’d had to learn not to give the impression of a drug addict and it was difficult now not to flinch and twitch away from the future past. He forced himself to breath slowly and deeply.  
Nagi took a familiar bottle of pills out of his slacks pocket and set it on the coffee table in front of him as Tot set the coffee tray down. Brad tried not to notice how his hands were shaking as he opened the bottle and freed up a pair of migraine pills. He managed to get them to his tongue and swallowed with black coffee. He set the cup back down carefully. “Alright, what the hell happened?” he looked at the strangely familiar but still not quite ‘Nagi’ in his mind.  
Nagi sat down across from him. Tot, (who did not look to have aged, or matured, one damn bit in five years) handed ‘the kid’ a cup of coffee, which he sipped, then balanced on his crossed knee. “Two weeks after you entered Shinjuku, the Fundamentalist Islamic terrorists were panicking at the increasing push back from the new American President. Attacks had been increasing exponentially in the EU and Muslim countries. They managed to get hold of Prince Charles and Camilla on some school opening tour, and beheaded them on YouTube.”  
“They….?” Yuuji started, then failed to find words for once. He just sat there, blinking.  
Schuldig for once, was struck dumb.  
Nagi continued, obviously trying to keep it short and sweet despite the amount of information. “England went up in flames, followed by the rest of the EU. The UN Globalists went crying to the US. The new US President, never one to mince words, told them they should have seen that coming. That’s when Esset stepped in. The nationalists in every country were handed weapons and told to stop whining and start fighting. Once the European nationalists realized someone was actually going to do something, they locked step with Esset. Russia, China and Japan joined the US in sitting it out with a great big ‘I Told You So’. Right now, the Americans have a problem of their own. Financial break down, Race war, civil war, religious war, you name it, the shit hit the fan over there,” he sipped his coffee and set the cup on the table.  
“Damn,” Schuldig said indignantly. “We missed the start of World War 3!” He gave Brad an accusing look.  
“We have an embassy in Japan?” Brad was having a hard time despite the pills. His thinking was not as glitched as it had been in Shinjuku, but he couldn’t see the past, only the future, and he was really trying not to look.  
“As you know, Japan had ceased to rely on the USA for any more than show in the 1990’s. The Government accepted us immediately on the bases of the old treaty when we offered to assist them with North Korea. We gave North Korea tons of aid and told them to shut up and sit down, no one wanted their miserable little country.”  
“What about the Galea thing?” Yuuji asked.  
“Gone,” Nagi stated. “Mossad backing. We tracked them down and rooted them out. Right now, the Jews are all scrambling to get into Israel, because OMG, Nazis!” he put his hands up in mock horror. “The banking conglomerates were castrated, the NGOs trafficking immigrants had their finances cut off and were destroyed. The Jewish panic to rat hole is so bad, it’s down to DNA testing. Only true born Jews are getting in. It’s the end of the world and they are building their last temple. Which is really funny, because although they don’t know it, our contractors are supplying the materials for their temple and their final defense wall, and this one is going to be “huge”, to quote that loudmouth American.”  
“What about the Palestinians?” Schuldig asked.  
“Rounded up and deported. It’s a small country, and of course the Jews have the deed. Maybe their God should have given them a bit more land, because now they are packed in like sardines,” Nagi smirked over his coffee cup. “Talk about a death camp.”  
“But all this…” Brad pointed to the portrait on the wall. “I mean how are we getting away with all this?” he asked in utter disbelief.  
“Because we can,” Nagi replied seriously. “Because things were rapidly going to hell anyway and Reichsführer SS Griefeldt said ‘fuck it, let’s do it’, and we did. I think he’s having a midlife crises or something.” He drank his coffee.  
“’Reichsführer SS’ Griefeldt?” Yuuji echoed.  
Nagi half shrugged, his teenaged self still in there somewhere. “Had to call himself something when the lightening struck. Of course it helps that Esset orchestrated the wiping out most of the Islamic terrorists practically over night. ‘World War 3’ lasted about two weeks and that was over four years ago. People were pretty grateful about that, and anyone who wasn’t needed to shut up fast. And then there are the Zombies. That kind of distracted everyone from the whole Nazi thing.”  
“Zombies,” Brad, Schuldig and Yuuji said in a flat chorus of disbelief and dismay that it actually was true. Aya was having trouble following any of it because they were babbling in German.  
“Yeah, two years ago, one of the cures for Ebola sort of mutated and bam, Africa is overrun with Zombies,” Nagi grinned.  
“He isn’t lying,” Schuldig pointed at Nagi accusingly. “Brad, why is he not lying?” he demanded of him in outrage.  
“Shush,” Brad said, looking back at Nagi. “How does that work? I mean—really?” his head was still aching. When the hell were the pills going to work?  
“Oh, they don’t come back from the dead,” Nagi assured them, “but they do rot and their brains fry out and their eyes get all blood shot, their teeth start to fall out, and they get so hungry they eat other people, and yeah, they look and act like Zombies. For a little while, with their brains not working, they are, like, PCP strong. Then they fall over and die. Remember when the first cure for Ebola the World Health Organization and the Center For Disease Control came up with worked better on non blacks? Well, after they covered that little bit of news all up, they tweaked it for black DNA and it seemed to work. But then it hit the AIDS infected black population and wham, battle of the viruses. So yeah, Black Zombies Matter, and hey, Nazis? Pfft, who cares, bigger problems.”  
“That’s incredibly insensitive and politically incorrect,” Schuldig said. “When do we get to go bash their heads in with baseball bats?”  
“We don’t,” was Nagi’s reply. “We are not in the business of healthcare. I thought you were afraid of Zombies.”  
“Only the imaginary ones,” Schuldig asserted. “Those are scary as fuck,” he shuddered.  
“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Aya demanded in Japanese.  
“Traugott,” Brad said grimly.  
“I need to call my mother,” Yuuji got up and went to stand by the window to take out his phone. “She’s going to kill me this time.” 

@ @ @

By the time they arrived at Rosencruez, it was near midnight. Brad had slept on the plane, but his talent was driving him nuts. All he wanted to do was sleep until it caught up. And maybe wake up to find everything had been a dream brought on by something horrible in the Shinjuku cuisine.  
Not unsurprisingly, the dorm guest rooms they were assigned to had new uniforms laid out on the beds. Black, with full insignia, right down to the Rosencruez Standart cuff bands. He glared at the portrait on the wall. Did they have to plaster Hitler everywhere?  
“You’ve been awfully quiet. Not even your weird static thing,” Schuldig said, picking up a plastic bagged peaked hat and unwrapping it with the delight of a child at a birthday party. He turned to the mirror over the dresser and put the hat on his head, admiring it. The death’s head on crossed shin bones on the black velvet band looked absolutely evil. To say nothing of the eagle perched on a wreathed swastika on the peak over it.  
Brad gave him a dismal look as he undid his tie and dropped it on the dresser. “I’m reserving judgement until I have more information.” He just wasn’t sure how to deal with any of this. Every time he closed his eyes, time flashed by his optical nerves like spinning pin wheels.  
Schuldig took the hat off and looked at the label inside it. “Ah, this one is yours. No wonder it was so tight,” he tossed it down on the dresser and went to unwrap the one on the other bed. “You will notice they gave us a double room.”  
“I told you, they don’t care. They have what they need from us,” Brad shoved the neatly laid out uniform aside to flop backwards onto the bed. No opinion struck him as worth having at this moment. He just wanted everything to wait; wait until he caught up. And came out of shock.  
Schuldig looked down at him, then put his new hat on his head, giving it a jaunty tilt. “I think you’re pissed because you did not see this coming,” he went back to the mirror. “The Fourth Reich. Zeig Hail, Baby,” he grinned at himself in the mirror, and started humming a tune.  
“Please don’t turn this whole mess into a musical comedy,” Brad complained dully, recognizing it.  
“But I liked ‘The Producers’! That was the funniest thing Brooks ever did. Well, next to ‘Blazing Saddles’.”  
“Aside from the fact that his majesty the drama king would have had the films burned as degenerate,” Brad grumbled and turned to curl up on his side.  
“Well, you have to admit, we Germans are the genetically superior ones, but that’s no reason to be assholes about it,” Schuldig posed like Marilyn Monroe, then straitened up again. “Damn, I forgot my rank. What is my rank?” he went over to look at the jacket’s insignia. “’Hauptman’, cool.” He walked over to look down at Brad. “Are you going to let me in, or not?”  
“No. I need to think. And I want to do it alone.”  
Schuldig frowned, then sat down on the end of the twin size bed to unlace and slide Brad’s shoes off.  
“Don’t,” Brad groaned as the red head started to massage his foot.  
“Fine, I will just mope with you, then,” Schuldig shoved the foot off his lap, and turned to try and lay down next to him  
“Mope on your own bed,” Brad pushed him off, but not too harshly. The time flashes were overlapping now, he couldn’t handle physical contact.  
Schuldig looked down at him. “How long are you planning to do this?”  
Brad turned over onto his back again, straightening out. Good question. “Until my talent catches up.” He looked up at Schuldig. “In fifteen years, Esset will still be here. That is what Mephisto said. That leaves ten now. I’m not sure how to handle that,” he sighed and put his arm over his closed eyes, as if that would help. It did not. He half thought of having his telepath knock him unconscious for the night, but that would just add to the back log. No, he would just have to rely on the pills and tough it out.  
“Ah, you have had the chaotic rug pulled out from under you,” Schuldig realized. “Not so fun any more now that you’re not calling the game, is that it?”  
Brad smiled ruefully. “Smart ass. Go to bed. Maybe I’ll wake up in the morning and everything will be normal.”  
“Humph, this is us we’re talking,” Schuldig said. 

@ @ @

Brad opened the door the next morning to find Nagi standing there. He looked him up and down, still not able to cope with this ‘sudden’ growth spurt. “This is going to take getting used to.” Surprisingly, the undersized boy had nearly hit the 6 foot mark. His limbs were still thin, but his shoulders had broadened and he was physically fit. He had gained a confidence that showed in his movements. Someone had kept him going to the gym.  
“It wasn’t my fault,” Nagi said with his old defensiveness. “Breakfast, then Council Meeting and De-Briefing.”  
Brad leaned on the door frame and yawned, then surveyed Nagi’s uniform. “Rank?” he asked.  
“Stabsfeldwebel.”  
“And the loony?” Brad asked quietly and carefully, looking him in the eyes.  
Nagi frowned. “Not as loony as you think.”  
Brad grinned at him mockingly.  
Nagi gave him the eyes of death. “She works in the laboratory.”  
Brad pushed his glasses up, even though they did not need to be adjusted and turned to find his suitcase. “We’ll be there.”  
“Well, just in case you forget, I can see your hats on the dresser,” Nagi said sarcastically.  
“Sarcasm noted,” Brad said coolly.  
“Tot and I are to be married next month,” Nagi said rather defensive and defiant at the same time.  
“Field agents do not marry,” Brad stated blandly.  
“Someone went off and left me without a field assignment,” Nagi retorted. “I’m Chancellor’s office staff. And yes, I am pissed off. I can either marry and be stuck forever, or not, and die of---You know.” He scowled, suddenly not so grown up after all.  
Schuldig looked up from buttoning his uniform jacket. “Well, congratulations,” he said. “But where does that leave us? Who is going to carry the luggage, and move the furniture from now on?”  
Nagi threw all the pillows in the room at him.

@ @ @

“Your father?” Crawford asked in disbelief, stirring sugar into his coffee. “But—he was head of Esset’s internal police.” They were in the cafeteria having breakfast. It was almost normal, the clatter of plates and silverware, the murmur of student conversation around them.  
“He still is, but apparently Traugott likes him,” Yuuji said. “He’s quiet, agrees with everything she hands him, and he rarely comes to the office. The perfect boss.”  
“He’s the head of the Gestapo. He’ll traumatize the students worse than Holzweber ever did,” was Crawford’s opinion.  
“I know. Evil, isn’t it?” Yuuji sipped his coffee. “Poor old Holzie hasn’t been the same since she did what ever she did to convince him she wasn’t human. What ever that was,” he looked at Brad expectantly.  
Brad felt a wave of nausea and considered his remaining breakfast with questioning eyes. “It’s not exactly something you ever want to experience.”  
“Tentacles?” Yuuji asked wickedly.  
Brad shook his head. “I’m an atheist, and even I know a god when I see one.”  
“Hmm,” Yuuji said, looking at Schuldig.  
“Not going there,” Schuldig dribbled crumbs from his pastry. “That thing in Fujimiya is scary enough for me.”  
Aya glared at him.  
“Oh, shut up,” Schuldig told him.  
“Don’t start!” Brad ordered the red head.  
“Five years, and no one but me has grown up,” Nagi commented in a mild aside, over his sausage and scrambled eggs.  
Brad rolled his eyes and decided he was hungry after all, horrific half remembered nightmare or not. 

@ @ @

“Fujimiya, you will go to the lab for a full physical and samples,” Traugott handed him a sheet of paper when they walked into the Chancellor’s office. “Frau Doctor Sarazawa is waiting for you.”  
Aya blinked and held it up to stare at it. It was a map of the school with a red X on it.  
“Go,” she shooed him.  
“Hey, wait a minute…” Yuuji said, snatching the paper and looking at it.  
Traugott looked at him with cool expectation.  
“Never mind,” Yuuji said, handing the paper back and tapping his head. “Brain washing, kicking up again,” was his excuse. “You wanted to meet my parents,” he looked at Aya. “Dr. Sarazawa Chieko is my Mum. She invented the word ‘invasive’. Watch her like a hawk and don’t mind her sense of humor.”  
Aya wavered. Yuuji made the same shooing motion at him Traugott had. The younger man slung himself out the door in a bad temper.  
“What the hell have you been up to?” Brad asked her, the irritation only increasing the headache the pills were barely touching.  
She went to sit down behind the desk. “What you brought me here to do. Organize.” She smiled at him tauntingly.  
“And this lead to---THIS?” he pointed at the portrait of Hitler on the wall. “Why not the Emperor of Japan or something?”  
“This is not Japan,” she said. “Adolf Hitler is this organization’s spiritual leader.”  
Brad tried to hold his head together with his bare hands. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He breathed deeply and exhaled slowly three times. He opened his eyes and let his hands drop. “Just—explain,” he said quietly.  
“The demise of the ‘Elders’ left the organization fumbling. I simply assimilated everything and returned them to the original purpose of Esset. The uplifting and continued improvement of the Aryan race and any individuals deemed worthy enough to be included.”  
“Oh, well,” Brad said in airy sarcasm. “And what’s next? We set out to rule the world?”  
“Where’s the fun in that?” she said with a small smirk.  
Brad glared at her suspiciously.  
“You have a meeting with the Council in five minutes,” she reminded him.  
Schuldig caught his arm lightly, leaning to speak quietly to him. “You brought this on us, remember? You said, ‘They wanted a Demon, you would give them one,’ or something like that.”  
Brad looked at him. Then realized why the red head had hold of his right arm, his preferred gun hand, the trigger finger of which was twitching in unison to the ticking nerve behind his right eye.  
“I have a concise report of Esset’s current position in the world ready for your debriefing,” Traugott said. “Naoe will bring it along when you are done with the meeting.”  
Schuldig gave a little tug on his arm. “Let’s go before they shoot us for being late,” he smiled to show it was a joke, but there was a strain in his eyes.  
In the hallway after he had shut the door behind them, Yuuji turned to stop them in their tracks and put into words what Schuldig was thinking. “Brad, you`re freaking out.”  
“I’m just a little off balance, that’s all,” he responded angrily. “Don’t worry about it.”  
“I know how your talent works on you when you’re like this. I can have Mother put you on medical leave until you get a grip again,” he offered.  
“Excuse me,” Schuldig interjected. “I can handle this. And I think we’d better tell the council your talent is up to full force,” he looked at Brad again. “Make up some story about Shinjuku or something.”  
Brad nodded once, distracted by either his own thoughts or visions he was having.  
Yuuji frowned, not liking this one bit. 

@ @ @ 

Aya found the medical biology lab with the help of the map Traugott had given him and steeling himself, knocked on the door. No one answered. He tried the latch and opened it, peeking in.  
“Come in! Don’t just stand there,” Sarazawa Chieko lowered the face mask she had been wearing. She was clad in a paper mob cap, face mask and smock with gloves on and those silly blue paper booties. Three other workers in the lab looked at him curiously, before returning to their work. “Step into exam room 2 and strip, and I’ll be right with you.” She put the mask back up over her face and put a tiny canister in a little refrigerator on the work counter. The refrigerator had dry ice in it or something that made a lot of fog when opened; either that, or it was really cold.  
Aya turned bright pink. It did not in anyway escape him that his lover’s mother was about to see everything he had, including some—erm—love bites. He considered ritual suicide. Then he stepped into room 2 and tried to tell himself it was just like the health exams in school. Which it was. Just a health exam. He manned up and started undressing.  
He sat down on the cold paper covered steel exam table and tried not to think about what he was going to go through. The fact that said table had serious leather straps hanging down the side and fluid channels like a morgue table meant nothing. They probably had to keep things multi-purpose. He was just here for an exam. The doctor was like any other doctor, he kept telling himself. Not Yuuji’s Mother.  
He covered himself with both hands when there was a tap at the door and it opened before he could say anything.  
Chieko came in, grinning at him with a smile he realized Yuuji had gotten from her. “Well, look at you. You’re in excellent physical shape.” She caught him by the jaw and took a penlight to his eyes. “Hmm. Very nice. Some interesting genetics there. Any children yet?”  
“What?” Aya said, shocked. “No! I’m only 20!”  
“Never too late to start,” she said, pressing on his jaw so that he had to open his mouth, and sticking her thumb in to make him open it wider. She examined his teeth and tapped one. “A little crooked, but that can be fixed.” She let him go and put the stethoscope ear pieces on. “Let’s hear you breath.”  
The exam was fairly standard until she said, “Stand up. Good. Now hands up, bishounen, let’s check your junk.”  
Aya stood there, keeping himself covered, pink spreading from hair line to toes.  
She arched an eyebrow. “Seriously, I am a doctor,” she stated. “Now present arms.”  
Aya died inside for the millionth time and put his hands at his sides, then awkwardly crossed them, then put them at his side again, then crossed them, then gave up and consigned his soul to the gods.  
“Well, you are a man, despite that pretty face,” she said in a most unprofessional way, feeling his balls for lumps and irregularities, then checking his penis with clinical aloofness. “Turn around.”  
He looked at the plastic gloves she wore. “What are you going to do?”  
“Well you are too young to be worrying about your prostate, but I want to see that ass. It looked pretty good in those jeans.”  
Aya looked at her.  
She grinned at him, and Aya realized this was where Yuuji had gotten his wicked sense of humor, too. “Boy, you have nothing I have not seen a million times. Unless you’ve got nipples on your buttocks, turn around.”  
He turned around, his brain in some sort of freeze. Possibly shock.  
She put the stethoscope on his lower rib cage. “Breath deep and hold it, then exhale slowly…Hmm.” She dropped the stethoscope and felt his ribcage, then turned him a little in the room’s lighting and made him bend to one side. “What the--?” She felt some more on his right side, then checked the left. She pulled her reading glasses out of her coat pocket and bent to take a closer look, poking at the skin. “How is it you are missing a rib? Not both, the one?”  
“Dr. Mephisto took it for—an experiment,” he said, embarrassed as hell.  
“But there is no scar,” she looked again, stretching the skin this way and that. “How long ago?”  
“About five weeks. The first time we went into Shinjuku.”  
“Amazing,” she said, taking her penlight to the skin. “What experiment?”  
“I—don’t know,” Aya lied. Actually, he didn’t even want to think about it. Ever. That—creature….  
“Would you like to know what my talent is, little boy?” she poked him in the side with a finger. “I’m a human lie detector. It’s not much, but it doesn’t pay to play games with me.”  
“I really can’t tell you,” he said firmly.  
“Hmm,” she said skeptically. “Well, if you have any metal on you, kiss it goodbye now. You’re going into the MRI.”

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

The council room now sported even more potted plants, and a huge three-quarter length portrait of Hitler framed by swastika banners on the back wall. It looked original; the varnish old, as if someone had kept it squirrelled away. In it, the Fuhrer stood with one hand on a globe depicting the continent of Germania as planned back then, his other hand holding a sheaf of papers (the plans themselves? Or the son of a government official intended to bury the world in paper work?)  
Brad met the eyes looking at him and bowed with his hand on his heart, “Gentlemen.”  
Yuuji and Schuldig stayed one step behind and to either side of him, their hats under their arms. Brad had left his on the dresser deliberately.  
The council stood as one, at attention and with arms in the air, and chorused “Heil Hitler!”  
Brad sighed again. “You’re all mad,” he said quietly but firmly.  
Yuuji and Schuldig looked at each other in mild fear. ‘What the hell is he up to now?’ went through both their minds without the telepathy needed.  
“Sit,” Griefeldt said, and all but the trio did. “You might have noticed things have changed while you were gone,” he said with a wry smile, taking his own seat.  
“Yes. Apparently we are no longer a ‘covert’ organization,” Brad said. “Naoe told me some of it, but I have yet to read the reports for the past five years. What is our official status?”  
“Somewhere between a global corporation and a religion,” Griefeldt answered calmly. “A nation without borders, a mercenary army for hire, like the extinct UN Armed Forces. It drives them mad. Their laws can’t touch us because—their laws,” he raised his brows and tossed a hand in the air and chuckled. “Because we are non-political and make no effort to take over any sovereign countries or force our agenda on them, about the only thing they can do to us is make faces and forbid us travel visas. Unfortunately for them, we are legion.”  
“And no one has threatened to drone us out of existence?” Brad asked mildly.  
“I believe that fellow got lynched in the first riots in Washington, DC,” Griefeldt said, rocking from side to side in his executive office chair, elbows on the armrests, fingers laced across his flat stomach. He seemed quite comfortable with the way things had been going, Brad noted.  
The old stressed out and haunted look under the regime of the Elders had finally worn off the Council. The battered bride syndrome, he’d once compared it too. A marriage of convenience gone to hell. Presumably the party had purged itself of any remains of their influence on the talent program as well. He was not sensing any threats to himself on the timeline. Interesting. Almost discomforting.  
“Something you wish to say?” Griefeldt asked, his own talent picking up Brad’s emotional storm.  
Brad’s chin went up a bit, stubborn as ever. “Frau Traugott has told me we are rededicated to the original agenda?”  
“More than ever,” Griefeldt answered.  
Brad looked at the polished wooden floor, carefully considering what he was about to say. Oh well, it would not be the first time he had attempted ‘career’ suicide. “If the Council pleases,” he said formally. “What is the current determination on homosexuality?”  
Griefeldt looked annoyed. They all pretty much looked annoyed. “You know the law.”  
“I have no interest in women,” Brad said calmly, and finally being out with it, he felt nothing. No great relief, no ‘pride’ at ‘coming out’. People were weird.  
“Yes, well,” Griefeldt looked at the table top, taking his time to pronounce sentence. He looked at Brad again. “As long as you keep your non-sense in the privacy of your own bed rooms, leave the under aged boys alone, and allow your genetics to be archived, the council will continue to pardon your race crime. You, especially, being a product of science in this matter, we have to overlook certain things. Most of our A level talents have some wires loose, it’s just a fact of Nature. Which reminds me,” he leaned forward to consult a paper on the table in front of him. “You seem to have no sperm in storage. Is there a problem we need to be looking at?” he looked at Brad pointedly.  
Brad flat out blushed. “I vaguely remembering turning in my sample years ago. Has something happened?” he said innocently.  
“According the record, it was irradiated,” Griefeldt glanced a frown at the paper. “Now how did that happen? They were all in the same case and only yours was damaged. The Elders again, no doubt. Well, take care of it. I want a fresh sample in the lab before you leave on your assignment tomorrow.”  
“Tomorrow?” Brad said, echoing Schuldig’s exclamation in his mind, though without the shriek.  
“Naoe will fill you in. If you have any questions, contact the Council before 10 am. Your flight to Pacifica is scheduled for 2 pm.”  
Brad’s talent glitched yet again, giving him a stabbing pain for trying to figure that one out. “’Pacifica’?”  
“Long story, no time. Just read the briefing. Dismissed,” Griefeldt stood and raised his arm, along with the rest of the council.  
Brad sighed and raised a wilting return. “Heil Hitler,” he said morbidly.  
“Crawford,” Griefeldt said in a warning tone to his half turned back.  
Brad looked back at him.  
“The brotherhood has nurtured and trained you to be an exemplary young man. The world has changed a lot in five years and doubtless you would be in a much better frame of mind had you been here to go through this with us. But you will catch up and you will keep your pledge to the SS.”  
Brad turned back fully. “Yes, Herr Reichsführer,” he said, then straitened to attention and gave the salute properly, refusing to say anything, then turned and headed for the door.  
Schuldig and Yuuji glanced at each other, then followed Crawford in conflicted silence. 

@ @ @

“Okay, out with it!” Schuldig demanded in the hallway. “How the hell did you just get away with that?”  
“You heard him, I’m ‘special’,” Brad said bitterly.  
Schuldig bit his lower lip, then continued after him until he was walking at his side.  
Yuuji came up even on his right. “’Pacifica?’”  
“Lets just go to Nagi’s briefing and find out what the hell this is about. And I want him along with us on this one. No more desk jockeying.”  
“Dibs on collecting that sample,” Schuldig claimed. 

@ @ @

“Imperial Japan’s Western Territory of Pacifica, consisting of the former American territories of Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California,” Nagi proceeded crisply in Japanese as they filed in and sat down. “We will be landing in Honolulu International Airport and from there, meeting up with the mission to California to assist in the transition,” he clicked on the lap top on the desk in the meeting room and called up a damned power point on the smart board. Picking up a remote, he faced them. “Are you guys going to behave or what?” he grouched.  
The door opened again, and Obergefreiter Martz hastily blundered in with a file folder in his hand and took a chair noisily, then snatched off his hat with his free hand and stood again. He switched hat and file, then switched them again, finally throwing his right arm in the air and announcing “Heil Hitler!” Seating himself again, he fumbled with his hat before twisting in his seat to put it on the little hook on the back of the chair. From which it fell. He got again to pick it up and hung it up properly before sitting down. The file he had been carrying vomited paper across the floor.  
“What is he doing here?” Brad asked Nagi coldly.  
Martz said with obsequious pride, “I am part of the envoy. And may I say welcome back, Herr Oberstleutnant Crawford. It is an honor and a pleasure to be serving with such experienced and distinguished agents on this mission…”  
“Not again. Shut up, Martz!” Crawford snarled at him.  
He subsided, pale faced and blinking china doll blue eyes.  
Nagi looked like a teacher who was faced with the class of loser students. For life. “Can we please all just get along?” he asked very quietly.  
Aya opened the door and peeked in, then satisfied he had found the right room finally, came in. He sat down beside Yuuji, shooting him a ‘death to you and all your descendants` glare. “Your mother is—horrible!” he blushed. “She made me…” he made the jerking in front of his crotch gesture. “Three times!”  
“Enough!” Nagi stated loudly. “I am in charge here and you are all going to just sit there and listen to what I have to say!”  
“Sugoi,” Schuldig said, impressed. ”He’s really perfected that ‘I’m in charge here’ attitude.” He raised his hands and gave a polite little applause, then made a rolling hand motion for Nagi to continue.  
“Shut up, Schuldig,” Nagi growled.  
“Oh, dear gott, he’s actually become mini-you,” the red head informed Crawford. “I saw that coming years ago,” he said smugly.  
“Just get on with it,” Crawford drawled in annoyance.  
Nagi waited, expecting someone to start again. The room was silent. Schuldig had settled into his ‘this better be good’ pose, slouched, arms crossed. Yuuji man-sprawled, and threw an arm across the back of Aya’s chair. Aya sat like a girl; knees together, hands between them, still suffering from enforced self molestation. Brad just shifted, crossed a leg over the other and looked bored. Martz was picking up his papers and trying to organize them, unable to be quiet about it.  
Nagi used his talent to gather up the papers in to a neat stack, slotted them into the manila file—then trash canned them with a flourish and a heavy thunk.  
Martz gaped like a fish, then sulked.  
Brad smirked approvingly. Maybe he could find a way to do the same with Martz at the airport.  
Schuldig looked at him. “Behave, Mein Mann,” he warned. “Remember the law of unintended consequences, the one you read me the riot act about?”  
Brad stuck his tongue out at him. Fair was fair if he wanted to switch sides.  
“She forced me to look at all her grandbaby pictures,” Aya hissed at Yuuji. “They all have your eyes. All fifty-six of them.”  
“Well where the hell do you think they came from?” Yuuji asked him in a whisper. “Believe me, I had nothing to do with that. They are all under three, now aren’t they? Eight, I mean,” he corrected the forgotten time thing.  
“You’re still a pig,” Aya said and shut up.  
“Shut up, the both of you,” Brad ordered.  
Nagi took a deep breath to calm himself and continued, bringing up a map on the screen. “Our task is to assist our Japanese allies to smoothly transition the former US territories into functioning Japanese colonies. It began when California declared itself a separate nation. Cut off from the US, the economy failed with in weeks. China, fearing that the debt the state owed through the US loans piled up by the previous President would not be paid, foreclosed on California and took the other three states, who by then were also talking secession, as payment.  
“This brilliant move on the part of the USA government cleared the debt, but stuck China with a white elephant on a rampage. Turns out when actually faced with Communism, censorship, and work camps for the homeless and congenitally un-employed, Democrats aren’t so fond of it after all. Esset negotiated the sale of the former US territories to Japan. Loyal US citizens have been self evacuating since the California secession. There will also be people of Japanese-American and Japanese South American descent returning to the territories for homesteading. There is an ongoing effort to return lands stolen from Japanese during the 40’s internment. All priority is to be given to the indigenous Japanese, Chinese, South East Asian, Polynesian and Pacific Amerind population in general, baring certain racially mixed persons or imposters.”  
“Raaaaycisssst,” Schuldig murmured, fiddling with a lock of his hair.  
Nagi sighed. “Japan wants the territory cleaned up and turned back into a functioning bread basket. We have three more years to accomplish this. Esset approves of this plan, and has been making every effort to further it along.”  
“And what exactly will we be doing?” Schuldig asked. “Guarding the wagon trains?”  
“Filtering the transitional camps, mostly for the populace unable to self deport due to financial insolvency, but also to ensure no undesirables remain,” Nagi stated.  
“Boring,” Schuldig muttered.  
“Shut up, Schuldig,” Nagi ordered.  
Tiffany blue eyes went wide. “You can not order me around, I outrank you,” he tapped on the insignia on his collar.  
Telekinetically, Nagi picked him up, chair and all and smacked him back down again, giving him a good jar. “Under the Japanese command, Esset is dedicated to clearing out the un-wonted population in an orderly and timely manner, with as few deaths as possible,” he continued as if nothing had happened. “Anyone who does not already have papers will be held in a DNA testing camp until they can be sorted out and repatriated. The Civil war on the other side of the US border is not our concern. Other teams are assisting the Nationalists there.”  
Brad raised a hand. Nagi looked at him warily. “Yes?”  
“Can I shoot anyone I want to?” Brad asked with an evil grin.  
“It’s expected,” Nagi said. “Anyone who bolts a line, or breaks a rule is to be shot on the spot. We do warn them, and there are signs all over in multiple languages. Just aim for the legs and shoulders, we want them alive for the deportation with minimal emergency medical care.”  
“Oh, goody,” Brad said sardonically.  
“What about the prison populations?” Schuldig asked. “I read once that there are more people in prison in California than free on the streets.”  
“The prison and gang issues have been dealt with. Summarily,” Nagi stated. “Can I get on with this?”  
“Ignore him from now on,” Brad said.  
Schuldig stuck his tongue out at Brad. Martz, seeing this was shocked.  
“Our main problem will be with the attempts Mexican and South American nationals in the territory illegally are making to obfuscate and prevent Japan’s legitimate claim on the deeds on the land it paid for. Overlooking the fact that Mexico never owned anything above the Rio Grande River, the property having been claimed for the King of Spain, who issued deeds to Spanish citizens, they seem to think they can just waddle in and start yelling and waving their flag and setting things on fire, and Japan has to turn it over ‘because’ they are yelling and waving their flag and setting things on fire. Slow learners.”  
“I am beginning to think that these people just don’t understand the concept of ‘Nazi’,” Schuldig addressed Yuuji. “I mean, we swoop in, kill everyone who opposes us; then little children and pretty girls bring us flowers and wave flags. We stomp around in our jack boots pointing at impressive things for selfies, steal some art, empty a few banks, put up a provisional government and then on to the next atrocity. Who does not get this?” he threw his hands up in the air.  
Yuuji shrugged. “Not everyone is as sophisticated as the French.”  
“I can’t stand jalapenos,” Brad said, making a note in a small notebook he had taken out of his jacket pocket. “Is Canada going to be a problem?” he looked up.  
“No, the Caliphate of Canada has agreed to keep the peace. Surprisingly, the majority of Canadian Muslims were religious moderates who just wanted to smoke pot, drink booze, watch porn, and have gay marriage,” Nagi answered. “Just not next door to Jews.”  
“How long have we got to perform this miracle of efficiency?” Brad looked up at him.  
“Six weeks.” Nagi stated. “Starting with assuming command of the Rockwell Standart. A surprising number of the American Nazi party kept the faith or converted in the region. We were able to recruit those without disgusting tattoos or mental illness to a strength of 7,000, give or take a few CIA members. Martz will be filtering those out.  
“The CIA has no legal right to be on Japanese property, and their tactics will not be tolerated. Their own government has disavowed them since the troubles began anyway, and they’ve gone rogue, colluding with Mossad. We can expect assassination attempts.”  
“Basically,” Yuuji said grimly, “We’ve been sent to the Front.” 

@ @ @

“Beaches, surfing, fish tacos,” Schuldig said as they walked down the hallway half an hour later. “Not piles of snow, fingers breaking off, and being forced to eat dead horses and maggoty dogs. You exaggerate.”  
“It’s still ‘the front’,” Yuuji said. “A war zone.”  
“Occupied Territory,” Brad corrected. “A police action at best. And there will be no surfing.”  
Schuldig pouted. “Well, I burn anyway, but that’s just not fair.”  
“Maybe if we do a good job, they’ll send us to Hawaii,” Yuuji cheered up a little.  
“If we do a good job, they’ll relocate us to an even worse hell,” Brad said dully.  
“If I may…” Martz said.  
Brad stopped short and glared the five inches down at him. “Martz,” he said ever so softly into his face, “do you have balls?”  
Martz blinked and swallowed. “Well—yes, Sir, but….”  
“But they are in a jar at home on Muti’s shelf, perhaps?” Brad asked.  
Schuldig rolled his eyes.  
“Brad…” Yuuji said, playing peace maker.  
“Hesitation, Martz, is not the way of ESSET!” Brad yelled in his face. “You either spit it out or shut up! None of this ‘if I may’ or ‘with your pardon’ or ‘please, Sir, can I have some more?’, Is. That. Clear!”  
Martz was frozen at attention, sweat beading on his forehead. “Yes, Herr Oberstleutnant, Sir!” he barked back, his eyes focused over Brad’s left shoulder.  
In one swift move, Brad took out his gun and shot at the floor.  
Martz startled just a little bit, a drop of sweat finally gathering enough volume to roll down his temple.  
Brad put the gun away. “Now go change your boots,” he said coldly.  
Martz looked down. The bullet had grazed the side of his left boot, his white sock showing through the hole. He swallowed hard. Then he threw up his arm in a salute and ran for it.  
“Brad,” Yuuji said in mild disapproval.  
“He didn’t piss himself,” Brad said. “Maybe he does have a spine.”  
“He’s Griefeldt’s sisters’ son,” Nagi informed them. “We’re stuck with him.” He walked past them, looking over his shoulder. “And don’t forget, you have a deposit to make,” he grinned and did the jerking off gesture, then strode down the hall.

@ @ @ 

Brad put the containers on the counter and looked down at Sarazawa Cheiko as she came over to check them. “Happy now?”  
“Well, that took long enough,” she snatched them up and proceeded to her work station to transfer the contents to a glass tube with a glass tippet, reserving two drops from each for microscope plates. “These better be viable.”  
“As far as I know, I haven’t been exposed to any radiation and can’t you just take cells from any thing now and extract DNA?” he complained.  
She shot him a glance. “I’m beginning to think you share strands with a mule.”  
He snorted. “Mules are sterile.”  
She turned on the microscope and sat own to look at the screen. “We shall see,” she said, adjusting the view.  
“Sarazawa-sensei,” Brad said quietly after a few minutes of watching her mess with the squirming things on the screen. “The circumstances of my birth….”  
“It’s all very scientific and would bore you silly,” She took her glasses off and set them down on the counter, looking up at him. “Why bother with it now?”  
He indicated the microscope. “Why bother with me now?” he asked bluntly.  
She smiled wryly. “What else do I have to do around here all day? Besides, you’re never going to do this on your own, now are you.”  
“I don’t see the point,” he said, feeling a bit defensive.  
“People die,” she said. “Esset needs all the bodies it can get, we are expanding, and the future is not going to happen without people to carry it forward. Stubborn mules like you are going to get with the program whether you like it or not, and given this count,” she tapped the screen, “you are not as much mule as you like to act.”  
“Maybe you can find a way to remove that ‘gay gene’, then,” he said with a little anger.  
She shook her head. “We like what we like. It’s a matter of too many factors. Dominance, nurturing, emotional trauma, psychosis, social influence, all in the mind.”  
He smiled ruefully. “Then what is it with me?”  
She pursed her lips a little, looking up at him. “I suppose we might have erred a little more toward your maternal line.”  
“And Yuuji?” he asked lightly, skipping over the opening for that conversation. He was not ready for that. Not yet, and perhaps not ever.  
She frowned at him. “That is his own damned fault. You know he can’t resist a challenge. Which reminds me, you brats owe me a dinner date,” she turned to take the slides out of the microscope and slot them into a baggie for the cleaner. “Five years is a long time to put a rain check on hold.”  
He smiled more easily this time. “I have a cracking headache from the time change, I won’t be much of a guest. But I’m sure Fujimiya would like to take my place.”  
She turned to look at him. “No,” she said, shocked as the preverbal penny dropped.  
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Two years is a long time when you think someone is dead. You manufactured grandchildren, I found someone new. I—couldn’t leave that person when Yuuji re-appeared. He finally accepted that and moved on.”  
She made a face. “If you knew how often I relied on just pure denial to get through those years. This mission, bring him back safe to me again. Parts missing, I can deal with, but don’t let his face get ruined,” she turned it into a joke at the last minute, fighting something down.  
“We’ll be alright,” he assured her. Not that he knew yet, but he’d long learned that just lying optimistically was what one did with normals.  
“Come to dinner anyway, if you feel any better. And bring your new friend. I have an awful feeling I know who it is,” she grimaced. “I’d better get a clean sample off that red headed terror, too. Send him along.” She was now all back to business.  
“Sensei,” Brad said just a bit slowly, “Might I ask you a question I have little right to the answer to?”  
She looked up at him again. “Hmm?”  
He hesitated. He really did have no right to this information. He met her hazel eyes. “The girl, Tot. Has she been cleared for marriage?”  
She blinked. “You wouldn’t!” she hissed.  
“No, no, you’ve got it wrong,” he hastened to correct. “I’m—concerned about Naoe Nagi. He’s—“ he looked at the ceiling, sighed and then looked back at her. “I’m rather invested in him. Surely you’ve seen his file. I’m concerned about his attachment to such a—raving lunatic.”  
Chieko frowned, then steeled herself, resolution showing in her set jaw. “I’ve recommended she not be left alone with her own children. Girls with her—trauma—often kill their own infants out of a twisted sense of mercy. However, she is physically, genetically clean. Which is a surprise, given some of the things she’s been able to tell us about what that Takatori nut was up to,” she frowned again. “However, I am pleased Naoe has found someone of his own culture to join with.”  
Brad had to laugh. “Racist,” he purred at her admonishingly.  
“You bet,” she said, giving him a thumbs up. “After all, it’s my life’s work. Now get out. Before I start showing you some photos of my grandbabies,” she arched a familiar eyebrow at him.  
He fled.

@ @ @

“Someone has to stop your mother,” Brad informed Yuuji, putting a hand up to cover a broad yawn he could not fight down. They were on the third floor patio balcony of the dorm building; a place set up for study, board games, wifi, and loitering with intent. Two vast trees now shaded it. The campus was being over run with trees that looked as if they had been there far more than five years.  
Brad must have had six cups of coffee since waking and they were not doing a damned thing besides making him pee. “There’s a lot of margin for error there. What if two of these ‘grandbabies’ end up dating each other?” He eyed Schuldig who was sleeping with his head down on his arms on the table.  
“Not with the records Esset keeps,” Yuuji responded. “You know since the old guy, every sneeze has to be recorded. And they locked all the books in that concrete safe before the final bug out. Do you know he measured pupils. Pupils,” he pointed to his right eye. “Besides, they’re tattooed,” he pointed to his under arm. “Mum has it all figured out. She’s evil, Brad,” he said seriously. “I have nightmares; she’s sitting there, a hundred years old, bald and stroking a big fluffy white cat, over looking a martial field of ‘grandbabies’ all goose stepping, ready to take over the world or what ever,” he shuddered and gulped more coffee.  
“God is punishing you for being Gay,” Brad sipped his coffee and looked out over the view of the exercise grounds. “Where did Fujimiya ferret off to?”  
Yuuji frowned slightly. “They’re running him through tests. He is a field recruit, you know.”  
“I keep forgetting,” Brad said sardonically. “And what better time to assess a recruit than when he is confused, disoriented, and exhausted. Or is he?” he narrowed his eyes at the blond.  
“Ass,” Yuuji said, sipping his coffee. He looked at the liquid in his cup. “This better not be decaf. I’m likely to pass out.”  
“Jet lag, gotta love it,” Brad droned. “Have you read any of that report Nagi compiled?”  
“Nope. I’m saving it for when I’m sitting in an office in ‘sunny California’ waiting for the opportunity to shoot someone. I can’t believe they sidelined us. Technically we’re only 35 for crisakes, not over the fucking hill.”  
“Oh, give it up,” Brad complained. “One minute it’s the front line, next it’s desk jockey. Make up your mind. At least it’s not a flower shop. What the hell?” he downed the rest of his coffee and stood up. “Bathroom. No spitting in my mug while I’m gone,” he warned.  
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Yuuji gave him a leer that meant exactly the opposite.  
“boku no hito,” Schuldig murmured in his sleep.  
“Hmph, dreaming in Japanese,” Yuuji reached over to pat him on the head. “You go right on dreaming,” he whispered in Japanese. “Reality will bite you on the ass.”  
Schuldig raised his head and glared at him with bleary eyes. “Let me sleep, you jerk.”  
“You were drooling,” Yuuji pointed to the small puddle.  
“So what?” Schuldig put his head back down.  
Brad found the tatty but perfectly maintained 1950s utilitarian multi-stall bathroom. He relieved himself, washed his hands, and checked a mirror to see if he had not retroactively aged two years for each of the five. He gave himself some slack for being tired and the headache the meds did not quite take away, and wet his hands again to finger comb his hair back from his widow’s peak. He realized his headache was finally giving up. When he closed his eyes, the flashes were no where near as painful.  
‘You will go where Esset sends you, you will do what Esset tells you to, your loyalty is to Esset alone, and you will die before you betray that trust; is this understood?’  
Well, now he had to chose. Live up to that oath, or just disappoint the hell out of everyone who was complicit in his creation.  
He smoothed down the black uniform jacket and took one last look at himself. When he stepped off that plane in California or Pacifica or what ever the hell the Japanese were calling it now, he would be wearing the belt with the dagger he had earned more than once, and the gun holster at his side. No longer covert, but a soldier. What a step down.  
With a tired smirk reflected back at him, he wondered if perhaps Sylvia hadn’t got the better end of the deal after all? 

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

  
“A level,” Yuuji said, looking at the paper work. “Congratulations,” he looked at Aya, who was sporting a deathly sullen glare.   
“They tried to kill me,” he hissed. “Five times.”   
“Who died?” Yuuji asked, just a bit concerned.  
“They put me in a room with block walls; shot at me; attempted to gas me; threw in a hand grenade; moved me to another test room; tried some corrosive chemical from the water sprinklers; and then they sat me down and tried to garrote me. The bullets misfired; the gas nozzles stuck and the pump broke; the grenade was a dud; and the garrote wire snapped when the guy pulled the handles apart to wrap it around my neck. It took his eye out. That’s when the guy in charge of testing had a massive heart attack. They rushed them both off, so I don’t know,” he finished angrily.  
“Ouch,” Yuuji winced and handed the paper back, looking at him in sympathy. “Aya—it wasn’t your fault your sister was injured so badly. You got that, right?” he assured him.  
Aya looked down, his hair hiding his eyes. “I know.” He drew in a deep shuddering breath and looked up again. “But this proves it, doesn’t it? That asshole Schuldig is right,” He tossed his head to clear his eyes. Sometimes he still looked dreadfully young.  
Yuuji recalled his own tests on the matter. “Sure does,” he said, projecting innocence. Quick, change the subject. “So, how does it feel to be a fully fledged member of an ‘evil organization out to take over the world’?”  
Aya’s mouth twitched. “Better than being someone’s damned dog. It just—still seems very weird,” he looked down at himself, now dressed in the black uniform with its red, white, and silver trims, the peaked hat in his hand. “That grey guy had me take the oath in front of the whole council, and your mother. Your parents are scary. I’m walking around surrounded by—Nazies,“ he whispered, glancing around to make sure no one was hearing him, “And your parents are scary.”  
“Oh, but they are so cute together, and I did warn you,” Yuuji reminded him. “The physicals looked good,” he had checked those numbers. He knew from experience Aya was tough as nails. So he dropped the bomb. “You’re coming to dinner tonight, and Crawford outed us to Mum.”  
Aya’s face went dangerously blank.   
Yuuji was very, very glad Aya-wildcat was not wearing his katana. He grinned endearingly (‘endearing grin #3’, with hints of basset hound puppy eyes). “She’s a very good cook.”  
Aya shoved his hair back and put the damned hat on. Oddly, on him the death’s head emblem looked perfectly natural, Yuuji thought, taking a few preventative steps back, just in case.

  
@ @ @

Schuldig came out of the shower still blurry eyed, with a headache slowly reacting to the pills he had taken before getting in. “We need to talk,” he said wearily. “You’ve been closed up all day now, and it’s driving me nuts.” He went over to sit on the bed he had claimed in the dorm guest room. “And what is wrong with going to dinner at Sarazawa’s house? I wanted to see the fireworks when the shit hits the fan.”  
“Have a little respect for people’s private lives, you nosey cat,” Brad said, not looking up from the five years’ condensed report Nagi had finally forced on him with a threat to ‘read it, or your bank accounts will go missing’. He was laying on the bed in his shirt, slacks and socks, the bound file in his hands “Anyway, you need to read this, too,” he pointed to the small dresser. “There’s your copy.”  
“Bullshit,” Schuldig flopped backward on the bed and stretched languorously. “I want my Brad back.”  
Brad made a derisive face. “If you didn’t have your uses, I would shoot you. Stop being a pest.”  
“Heard that before,” Schuldig grumbled.   
“Clue!” Brad said sarcastically.  
Schuldig got up and walked the two steps over to his bedside, sliding off the towel around his hips. “17:42, attempted to distract subject with sex,” he intoned.   
Brad let the ‘book’ fall flat on his chest and looked up at him skeptically.   
Schuldig put his hands on his hips and turned a little, the better to display his protruding bits.  
Brad raised an eyebrow.   
Schuldig looked very seriously sexy. Very seriously.   
“You’re hysterical,” Brad determined, and raised the file again to find his place in it.   
“17:43, subject is a fag, because I am seriously sexy,” Schuldig responded.  
“17:43, telepathic agent once again forgets his gender; recommend psychiatric evaluation. Again,” Brad droned.   
“17:44, jumped subject’s bones and proceeded to molest him in an attempt to break down resistance,” Schuldig did so, taking the report from Brad’s hands, tossed it over his shoulder and jumped his bones.   
The student bed creaked vociferously, as all student beds are obviously manufactured to do, and thus make sex either very embarrassing or very exhibitionistic.   
Brad wrapped his arms around his ‘attacker’ and squeezed him tightly, kissing him on the lips. “Stop that,” he said, looking into those so very amazingly blue eyes.   
“Stop what?” Schuldig asked innocently down at him, caressing his hip through the slacks.   
“Being naked and sexy all over me,” Brad pushed a cascade of damp red hair away from where it was tickling his cheek and half blinding him, tucking it behind Schuldig’s ear. “It’s very distracting.”  
Schuldig nuzzled his neck. “Let me in and I promise I will be very quiet, if not bored shitless.”  
“I can’t read the report in this position.”  
“Then we will have to try some other positions. Are you wearing your gun?” he purred, shifting.  
Brad laughed and swatted him on his bare ass, then squeezed him tightly again. “You idiot,” he kissed him again. “If you promise to be very quiet, I will let you in.” He rolled Schuldig off and rescued the report from where it had fallen off the edge of the narrow bed, rather than the pesky red head, who had landed on his butt.   
“Ouch! You mean bastard,” Schuldig got up off the floor, rubbing his bruised bum. He picked up his damp towel, then indicated his hard on. “What about this?“  
“Sarazawa-sensei did mention needing a fresh sample,” Brad said, amused. “Run along before it wears off.”  
“I hate you,” Schuldig turned to get some clothes on. He opted for a pair of pajama pants in thin grey flannel and stopped there, just in case. He picked up his copy of the report from the dresser and flipped through a few pages. “Boring,” he pronounced it and sat down on the foot of Brad’s bed. “Let me in,” he stated.  
“Just as boring second hand,” Brad warned.   
“You don’t get it, do you?” Schuldig half turned to look own at him. “I just want to be near you.”  
“I thought it was the white noise,” Brad was amused.   
“No,” Schuldig said, laying a hand on his left shin. “No, it’s more than that. It’s being with the only person in my very own world. Like being back in the womb, or some such nonsense.”  
Brad looked up at him. “I am going to kill you.”   
“You are totally unromantic, you know that?”  
Brad adjusted his glasses with his free hand. “Yes, and it does tend to keep things uncomplicated. Alright, you win,” he went back to the report.   
Schuldig slipped into his mind. He’d promised to be quiet, but it was already a maelstrom in there. The migraine pain added to his own headache and stoked it up again. He wondered how Brad could stand it. But being used to something like that—it was part of their breeding. He sighed, finding one thorn. The Galea thing. Brad resented having lost that ‘game’ by default. Bitterly. He had wanted to see them destroyed with his own eyes, at his own contrivance. He felt gypped of the hunt.   
Schuldig thought this over. Brad did not like to lose. But in the end, the enemy had been taken down. “Brad,” he dared.  
“What now?” he grumbled, eyes still on the report.   
“We would have dealt with the ‘Galea thing’ if we had been back in time. It’s not your fault we missed out, and not a failure on your part.”  
Brad sighed. “Okay. Thank you for the analysis. Now shut up.”  
“You’re welcome,” Schuldig said.  
“And take those pants off,” Brad put the report on the bedside table.

@ @ @

“Father, can we talk?” Yuuji asked in the door to his father’s home office. The old man had retreated there right after supper, as usual. Yuuji had played it safe and sent Aya (protesting) back to Rosencruez for the night.  
“That’s what your mother is for,” Sarazawa Ishida said, his nose in a book.   
Yuuji sighed. “Listen you, that stuff doesn’t work on me any more. I want my father on this one.”  
“Have you gotten some girl pregnant?”  
“No!” he said with his fingers crossed behind his back. Maybe. He had no idea of what had happened in those two years. Women liked to cheat. Say they were on the pill or poke holes in rubbers to steal a baby off a guy. Then the kid shows up later demanding to want to get to know you (and your bank account). He dreaded the next twenty years. Well, fifteen, now. He kept forgetting that. He was going to go back and kill that damned Koreshigi bastard.   
“Wrecked the car again?”  
“I never wrecked the car, damn it,” he protested. “That was Brad.” He’d only been along for the joy ride.   
“Dying of cancer?” his father continued blandly, not looking up from his book.   
“No! DAD, pay attention to me!”  
Ishida looked up. “Women’s work,” he said flatly. “Go talk at your mother.”  
Yuuji narrowed his eyes. “You’re probably the reason I’m Gay, you know that, right?”  
His father set the book aside on the desk, a volume of classical poetry. His office was a zen retreat of sorts; the walls lined with book cases over flowing, the desk (his father’s) old and battered and left that way, the view of the garden probably better than the one from the living room. Unlike his now flower hating son, his gardening skill was his pride and joy. His niwaki took prizes with the local Swiss ‘japanese garden’ group, (though Ishida suspected some of it was due to racism.)   
There was a little more grey in his father’s hair than the last time Yuuji had been home. He hadn’t noticed it at first, because he hadn’t looked. His mother, of course had kept hers colored.   
“Alright, Yuu-chan, what is it that so troubles you that you have to trouble me?”  
Hmm, Yuuji thought. More insight on his preferences in life. “Did you even miss me?”  
“The house was quiet,” his father said.   
“Will you stop being sarcastic?”  
“I’m being honest; you’ve been out in the world getting weird ideas.”  
“Dad,” Yuuji said sternly.   
“Son,” his father looked patiently intent on him.   
Yuuji frowned. “Now I’m so mad I forgot what I had to say.”  
“Good. Go away,” he picked up his book.   
Yuuji threw up his hands. “Father.” There was not even an extra chair he could sit down in. The old man really valued his privacy after a day dealing with people.  
His father looked at him again.  
“This thing in America—Pacifica—I mean. I’m covert, this isn’t my training. It’s none of our training.”  
“You’re saying it’s not your job,” his father said, settling back in his chair, the book still in his hands.   
“Don’t pull the psych routine on me,” Yuuji gave him a mild glare.   
“Yuu-chan, I have spent the past 27 years sending men out to their probable deaths. 96 percent of the time, they came back alive, unharmed, and successful. You’re my son. Not one of your mother’s test tube babies, I was there from the start. I expect 100 percent of you. Esset needs you there, for this assignment to be executed to perfection. Don’t whine.”  
“I’m not whining,” Yuuji protested (in almost a whine). “You’re a cop, give me some administrative advice on this thing.”  
His father blinked. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place.” He set the book down again. “Let’s review your orders.”   
“Can I at least get a chair?” Yuuji complained.  
“No,” Ishida stated, pulling open a drawer and taking out a folder. Being a member of the council, naturally he had a copy of the orders.   
Yuuji sighed and stood at parade rest.

@ @ @ 

Ten o’clock the next morning, 2/3s of the team had mostly rested enough to restore sanity, and mostly come to terms with reality. The other 1/3 was annoyingly chipper and ready to go.   
Martz rolled up in a dark green Mini Cooper with yellow stripes, and when he got out, a pretty young blonde woman exited the passenger side in her grey uniform and came around to be pecked on the cheek and handed the keys. They stood there billing and cooing at each other, two turtledoves obviously enamored beyond the call of duty.   
Brad was disgusted.   
“Hoh, Martz got lucky last night,” Schuldig chuckled.  
“That is Frau Elena Martz,” Nagi said, throwing a verbal bucket of of water on his nemesis. “They have two kids. Boys; a four and a two year old, Siegfried and Dietrich.”  
“Three,” Schuldig corrected after a moment. “Too early to tell, though, if it will be a boy or a girl.”  
The other four looked at him.   
Brad frowned and then his eyes flashed, the future confirmed. “Schuldig—you never mentioned being able to…”  
The German shrugged. “A mind is a mind. It’s faint, but it’s a strong one. Three weeks, and right on time. Like clockwork with those two,” he made a scary face. “They don’t know yet, so shut your mouths.”  
“Three weeks,” Yuuji said softly.   
“Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?” Schuldig said in a tight little voice.   
“I’d rather not,” Yuuji said grimly.   
Martz finally let his wife go in a fit of teasing and giggling. She drove off waving to him while not really watching where she was going until the last minute, narrowly avoiding hitting the not yet fully open gate.  
Martz, the fool, waved until she was out of sight. He looked like his world was driving away from him.   
“Oh, dear,” Schuldig said. “The honey moon is still not over.”  
“We didn’t need to know that,” Brad muttered out the side of his mouth. “She’s probably glad to be rid of him.”  
Yuuji gave him the stink eye. “You are going to be a horribly bitter old man, you know that?”  
Brad looked at his watch, as Martz approached them, pulling his one suit case. “You’re late, Martz!” he barked.   
The young man’s eyes widened in fear and he went into apologetic mode immediately. “I’m sorry, Herr Oberstleutnant …” he stammered.  
“He’s fucking with you,” Schuldig said. “That’s a very pretty little wife you have,” he leered. “Do you have any naked photos of her? Maybe with just the little white panties?”   
Martz stared at him in bewilderment.  
“They’re both fucking with you,” Yuuji said. “Welcome to Schwarz and park your sanity at the door.”  
Martz shut his mouth, then looked past them at Aya in his long black leather trench coat over his uniform, the long katana peeping out from the hem, and swallowed back a bit of bile, remembering what the glowering Japanese had done to the implanted spy as vividly as if yesterday. Esset still had a long way to go when it came to the crazies, he thought.  
Then he realized something. He looked at Schuldig, who was grinning at him like the bus-cat in his little boys’ favorite movie. He bit his lower lip and decided to keep his mouth shut until further notice.   
“Excellent idea,” the telepath purred at him.   
“Down, Schuldig,” Brad said dully. “Alright, we have three hours to get it together before the jet leaves. I’ve booked the study room number seven for our team meeting.”

@ @ @

“Martz, you’ll be stepping up Fujimiya’s German,” Brad informed him at the meeting. He was looking over his notes. “He’s been working on the basics. Your Japanese proficiency has picked up to level 3, that’s good, since we will be dealing primarily in Japanese. The working partnerships are as follows. Martz, Fujimiya; Nagi, Sarazawa; and Schuldig will remain with me. This isn’t your normal embedment scenario where we just blend in under cover. We’re sitting ducks. Always know where your partner is and cover his back at all times. No one wonders off alone in public, or gets distracted. If I have to chain you together, I will. Martz, you have toddlers, will this be a problem?”  
“How so, Herr Oberstleutnant?” Martz asked.   
“You’re not going to get all soppy over some snot nose little deportee appearing to be lost and be distracted while his parent makes a run for it?”  
Martz frowned, then spoke emotionally. “I am aware, Sir, of how these people use their own children for cannon fodder.”  
“Fujimiya, any problems?” Brad looked at him.   
Aya was sulking. “I suppose not,” he muttered, shooting Yuuji a dark look.   
“You don’t have to sleep with him, just work with him,” Brad said.  
Aya turned puce. Martz was going to be permanently pink if this kept up.   
“Martz, watch your partner’s temper. He has a tendency to slice first and forget asking questions,” Brad gave Aya a stern look.   
/He wants to slice you right now,/ Schuldig said in Brad’s head.   
“Our primary mission is to assist in the deportation process,” Brad addressed them all now. “The Japanese are in charge, we are to follow their orders first. Be polite, use honorific language, execute a half bow to any Japanese, no matter what rank; and salute ranking officers with our salute. They may or may not salute back, depending on their politics. Feel free to ask for clarification at all times. Japanese are accustomed to working together. Ask questions, then do what they suggest.   
“Our secondary assignment is to get this ‘Rockwell Standart’ into shape and ready for battle,” he looked at his paperwork on the table top again. “They’ve been vetted and are in boot camp at the moment. The USA was down to six weeks boot camp . Esset requires six months. We require motorcycle, horse, fencing, swimming, and helicopter training, while their military requires push ups, rifles and long marches. The majority of them have no previous experience with anything more than playing weekend soldiers, and are going to whine. Teach them to be good German soldiers, or kill them trying…”  
“Can we kill a few anyway, just for shits and giggles?” Schuldig asked.  
Brad looked at him.   
Schuldig slowly slid down in his chair until he could go no further without falling under the table.   
Brad cleared his throat. “Martz, Schuldig, you will be weeding out the ones with actual hostility toward the group, not the ones who are just bitching about the hard work. We’ll need proof before punishment. Amis are badly educated, and extremely gullible. They’ll be hostile if you just shoot one of their buddies without proof that he is a traitor in wolf’s clothing.”  
“What about a demonstration of our abilities?” Schuldig asked.   
“Don’t,” Brad stated. “We want to keep that as undercover as possible, not become larger targets. Blend in, act like we are just normal evil overlords come to make their lives a living hell. Be very polite, scare the shit out of them, but don’t expose your talents. Martz will be using trained dogs as a cover for his ability.”  
“I like dogs,” Martz spoke up. “We have the most adorable little long haired dachshund…”  
Brad looked at him.   
Martz shut up.   
Brad looked down at his notes. “Sarazawa, you will be monitoring the physical training. Our own people will be there to train the Standart, but make yourself useful. Nagi will be our liaison with the Japanese, just to make certain there are no misunderstandings.   
“Once again, our main goal is to clear the transit camps,” he looked up from his papers again. “You’ve all seen the news from America in the past years we’ve been gone. You will be spit on, swung at, and various other attacks based on frustration, loss of privilege, and just plain stupidity. What they all have to understand is that they are being legally evicted from the property, not as refugees or prisoners of war; their rights are exactly what they are getting. Those with papers go to the US; those without, back to Mexico, Pakistan, Haiti or where ever on the convoys.   
“Mexico has asserted it can legally refuse American-Mexican citizens, so don’t make mistakes based on race, and watch the children. They trade them around like poker chips. Some will try to get their kids into the US by paying others to swear they are theirs. Quite a few have already tried to avoid the US civil war zone by claiming to be illegally in the region to get deported anywhere but to the US. Watch the wrist bands for tampering, and if someone is not wearing his, send them back to the vetting camp.   
“That’s all I have right now,” he sighed, closing the laptop. “Just be prepared to hit the ground running and blend in. And one more thing. I want that hair up under your hats,” he looked at Aya, Yuuji and Schuldig. “Pin it, duct tape it, but up it goes.”  
Schuldig groaned. 

@ @ @

They arrived in the early morning, not long after dawn, on the same day, thanks to the stupid international date line.  
“So glad this is not Monday,” Schuldig complained. “Two mornings on the same day should never be Monday.”  
“Herr Oberstleutnant!” a young Esset soldier in the ubiquitous black called, hurrying up from a parked car on the tarmac of the private jet de-barking area.   
Brad sighed and stuck his arm in the air. Might as well get used to this. “Yes, soldier?” He could not see the rank markings, and frankly was not all that up on them.  
The soldier saluted, and then held up a box clip board with forms on it, double checking before addressing him, “Herr Oberstleutnant Crawford?”  
“Hai,” Brad said, letting him know how dreadfully unhappy he was. He did not remember signing up for the military. The sneaky bastards had drafted him right out from under his own feet.  
The soldier glanced at him warily. “There is cargo,” he said in German, and held out the clip board.  
“Schuldig,” Brad said.  
The soldier looked confused at his claiming ‘guilty’, then the so named red head stepped forward to take the clip board and signed it. “Now where is this cargo?” Schuldig asked in Japanese, just to be confusing.   
The soldier indicated another plane, unloading crates in process.   
“Martz, your dogs,” Brad said. The barking was now audible as one of the Japanese fighter jet’s engines powered down.   
“Very unhappy dogs,” Schuldig said, listening to the vicious slavering going on.   
“Nagi, help him,” Brad stated suddenly.   
Martz went pale. “What is wrong with those dogs? Something is wrong with the dogs,” he looked at Brad, his sixth sense for ‘the wrong’ kicking in big time.   
Nagi caught Martz by the arm. “Come along, Martz, lets’ get them calmed down.”   
“Doggies!” Schuldig picked up Brad’s vision and hurried over to pat and pry at the crates, seeing how they were made.  
“You can’t open those here, Sir,” the poor soldier warned.   
“Bullshit,” Schuldig was squatting to peek into the air holes on the side. “Hello, pretty,” he cooed in Japanese. Then looked over his shoulder. “Come, Martz! Meet your beasts of war!” he called in German.  
“What’s wrong with the dogs, Brad?” Yuuji asked quietly, coming up beside him.   
“Shinjuku,” Brad stated, frowning.   
“Tell me next we won’t be riding pterodactyls,” Yuuji complained. “Not the cliché of Nazis on dinosaurs, please.”  
“I give up,” Brad said, watching Schuldig rummage in a near by Jeep for a tire iron and start to bash and pry at one of the crates that were not supposed to be opened on the runway shoulder.  
In five minutes, the dogs burst out, ready to kill anything that moved, not to mention pee on the crate with the contempt only a dog who has been shipped 14 hours air freight can express.   
Three headed Alsatian, guard dog, two of. And three more crates to go. The insane barking increased in pitch as the others realized freedom was at paw.  
“Oh, mein gott, it’s Christmas!” Schuldig exclaimed in delight.  
They had broad torsos and shoulders to support their three muscular necks, and were several inches and pounds larger than their normal breed. Despite their obvious oddity, they were well formed, with bright intelligent eyes, all three heads capable of moving individually; the two side ones watching their surrounds as the middle ones focused on the crazy red furred monkey now making weird kissy noises and cooing at them. Trained to recognize the uniforms of those in charge, they laid down at dog attention to await orders, though there was a decidedly skeptical look in the male’s six eyes as he watched Schuldig for any signs of command.   
Nagi cleared his throat and said as quietly as possible, “Someone please catch Martz. He’s fainted and if I let him go, he’ll fall.   
Sure enough, Martz ‘stood’ there, eyes rolled up, looking like a sleep walker.   
“My life is a living hell,” Brad muttered, and started for the waiting stretch sedan that was their transportation. 

TBC

 


	8. Chapter 8

In Absentia 8

  
Brad threw the stupid hat down on the desk, and laid down his laptop case with a little more care. He had been shutting down emotionally, keeping things at arm’s length until he could deal with them. He realized now that if he did not reengage soon, he would be stuck out here in this hell hole forever. The Council was perfectly capable of coddling him to death.  
After all, they had done quite well without him and his team for five long years, he thought bitterly. Ironic that now that he had obtained his freedom, he was seriously thinking of making the very organization he had so long rejected sorry as hell they had side lined him.  
He looked around the converted master-suite-to-office of the hillside mansion the Japanese had assigned to Esset’s contingent. Some over hyped American actor had abandoned the property after he couldn’t sell the thing. It was excessive, the landscaping water starved and ugly, but the total rooms, garages and out buildings made it very useful for Esset’s purposes. Even the dogs had a kennel of their own. (Brad had been dreading telling Schuldig no, they could not be house pets. The kennels had settled it.)  
The large room had been stripped down to a few cheap desks and filing cabinets, along with a copy/scanner. They hadn’t bothered to strip the carpet and there was no odor of fresh paint. The ubiquitous portrait of old toothbrush mustache was faced down by one of the current Emperor of Japan. A map table already contained a detailed map of the region, showing not only roads, rails and cities, but also elevations along with heavy black lines depicting the boarders of America and Mexico. The sort of map one would use in a war.  
He sat down behind the desk with a heavy sigh.  
So. Here they were.  
He found a plug in on the wall behind the desk, chose the alternative power cord, and booted up his laptop.  
A dull thud rocked the distant landscape, and the Kongo Class Battleship in the LA Harbor scored another round on the city. “Training exercises. They’re flattening the coastal cities,” Nagi said. “The infrastructure was so useless, the Japanese decided to start from scratch. And it gets rid of any squatters. Anyone left in there after weeks of announcements deserves to be cut from the gene pool.”  
“A thousand deportees to process a day,” Brad skimmed the orders aloud. “The trains are intact, the airports are functioning, and we are not in the middle of a war. Easy as pie. The only problem will be herding them onto the transports without having to shoot every tenth one of them.”  
“Shoot them anyway,” Schuldig said, walking over to look out the windows at the swimming pool patio and the drop off into the valley beyond the eight foot high wrought iron fencing. “Why does ‘piece of cake' and 'easy as pie'--which by the way proves you know nothing of pastry--always mean major headache for me?”  
“Because you’re the telepath, my little flaky croissant,” Brad smirked wryly. “It’s your job.”  
“I hate you,” the German said blandly. “Nice location. Shall we call it ‘Eagle’s Nest’ or something else sarcastically historic?”  
The view was sweeping, probably gorgeous at night when all the lights of civilization been there. Now the sun glistened on the ocean coast below, and sent waves of heat over the dried out hillsides. Someone had turned the water sprinklers on; they swooped across the browned and in danger of catching fire landscape in rainbow making arcs of mist.  
Brad hated it. “Thank goodness with their penchant for robots, the Japanese don’t need forced labor this time around,” he drawled, still on the `paperwork`. “All we really have to worry about is training our new recruits to be good little soldiers. Sarazawa, go find the next office and pull up this file on the deportation process. Martz, take one across the hall and start reviewing the recruit’s records. Schuldig will assist you in finding any talents, though I doubt there are any. The Americans never focused on superior breeding, only bigger bombs,” he growled. “Nagi, you’re in charge of flagging any legal challenges and watching the social media for any chatter that might lead to incidents. We’ll start running the recruits through the mill tomorrow. For now, I want to familiarize myself with the transit camp layout and procedures, and lunch. Oh, and Nagi, find us some food. Preferably in the form of grilled steak and negligent veg. And get me a map of this estate.”  
Nagi rolled his eyes and left the room, not realizing he had slipped back into Emo habits, his body language going from that of a confident 21 year old to that of a perpetually annoyed 16 year old.  
“What am I supposed to do?” Fujimiya asked defiantly, his deep and resonant voice always a shock.  
“I don't know,” Brad looked up at him archly. “Go practice throwing swords at helicopters or something,” he said acerbically.  
“Come along, Aya,” Sarazawa coxed, catching him by the elbow and once again efficiently saving Brad’s life. “Time you learned how much paperwork Esset thrives on.”  
Aya murdered Crawford with a violent death through a purple haze and stalked out half dragged by Yuuji.  
“He’s in for a rough night,” Schuldig commented, turning to amble over to the door and follow Nagi to where ever in this place they had hid the kitchen. “Come, Martz, leave the man to brood over his new empire.”  
“And Schuldig, get me a cat,” Brad stated, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he swiveled slightly from side to side in the executive chair, studying the ceiling. “Preferably something white and fluffy,” he decided.  
“Jah, Jah,” Schuldig shut the door behind them.  
“He is joking, isn’t he?” Martz asked with his usual hesitancy.  
“Natürlich,” the red head said. “You don’t think he would really want long white hairs all over that black suit. Besides, a cat would not put up with him. He’s too difficult to control.”  
Martz stopped short and stared at Schuldig’s back, then decided to go do as he was told and set up an office. It seemed the safest way to survive this assignment. Despite the fact that he, too, wore the death’s head cap and black uniform, along with his badges for combat and marksmanship, he felt like the proverbial lamb among wolves.

@ @ @

  
Yuuji sat up and looked at the alarm going off on the desk between the two twin size bunks in the bedroom. It came back to him that he had fallen into bed rather early last night, having placated a really aggressive Aya, who was now curled up around him like a sedated python. The other bed was pristine, its blankets military tight. The only other furniture in the room was a bare wooden chair at the desk, and a couple of military chests at the end of each bunk. Esset spared their ‘enlisted men’ no luxuries, he thought morbidly.  
Apparently this had been the servant’s quarters. All the bedrooms were small and the building was set well back from the main house. Still, a bed was a bed when one was falling down tired from jet lag and data overload.  
Aya coiled tighter the moment he moved to extricate himself. “Aya,” Yuuji warned. “Aya, if you don’t wake up, I am going to scream rape.”  
Hazeled blue-brown eyes popped open.  
“Let go of me. I am too old to explain to housekeeping why I have wet the bed,” Yuuji growled.  
Aya grinned and squeezed harder.  
Gods, he was evil. Yuuji pulled his only free leg up and flipped them both onto the floor, which though carpeted, was hard enough to jar bones, and fought his way free, kicking and swatting, losing his underwear in the process. “Damn it, Aya, that is not funny!” he informed the giggling pest as he got to the door and opened it.  
Two pairs of eyes widened and hands went to mouths as the snickering started.  
Damn it. Esset had okay’d co-ed dorms.  
“Excuse me, ladies,” he said with as much dignity as he could, and shut the door to the bedroom behind him. Refusing to cover his junk, he marched down the hall to find the bathroom, his backsides burning bright red, he was sure. One of the girls pretty good at sounding the wolf-whistle. The other one giggled almost as badly as Aya.  
Yuuji found the door marked with a card labeled ‘Herren’ and shut it behind him like a shield. The previous house owner had at least provided two stalls and showers for the servants. He would talk to Brad about getting moved to better quarters, though. Preferably without young women roaming the halls in their nightgowns.  
His business mercifully done, he peeked out into the hall before hastily trotting back to the room.  
Yup. Aya was there waiting for him.  
“We have to mess up the other bed,” Aya informed him seriously, arms crossed. “For housekeeping.”  
Damn it.

@ @ @

Breakfast was to be found in a large room with a view of the pool that had probably been a den before being converted to the dinning hall.  
Two ‘grey mice’, as the French had once nick-named the occupying Nazi female staff in their grey skirt uniforms, started giggling as he walked in with Aya behind him. Recognizing them, Yuuji glared at them (borrowing one of Aya’s less deadly ones). They paled at the sight of his rank badges and pulled themselves together, then bent their heads to gossip with the other two girls at their table. All four shot him a very interested look as he turned to look for Brad and the others. He ignored it.  
Brad was not ignoring it. Aya’s glares were nothing compared to those pretty almond shaped eyes with their long black lashes. Yuuji sighed silently and sat down next to Nagi, who flanked Brad’s left and looked as innocent as possible. Aya plunked down in the chair next to him.  
“Why don’t you ask that flaming idiot telepath of yours exactly what he left out of that little tattle tale?” Yuuji said in German, hoping Aya’s understanding was still in the slow lane, and reached for the coffee carafe on the table’s center.  
Schuldig looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “What are you talking about?” Then he ruined it by blinking his blue eyes in a patently theatrical version of ignorance.  
“Stop it, the both of you,” Brad said bluntly.  
Schuldig grinned wickedly. /They are wondering who gave you the fresh love bites on your butt,/ he informed Yuuji.  
Yuuji went utterly blank, then glared at Aya.  
Aya looked at him, unconcerned, and helped himself to a serving dish.  
“That was an order, you lot,” Brad said dryly, finishing up his fried eggs and potatoes. “We’re not here to entertain the monkeys.”  
Martz’s talent informed him something was wrong here, but never exactly what. Basically, his talent made him paranoid, and though he tried to contain it, he was dying to know what the hell was going to explode and possibly take him out with it. Just working with the Japanese red head made him nervous as hell. He knew now what the man’s talent was, and it made him feel like he had the target painted on him every time he stood next to Fujimiya.  
His phone rang and everyone at the table looked at him.  
Martz wasn’t sure what to do. He should have turned it off. Manners dictated ignoring it, but it was ringing very loudly, and everyone in the dining room was now looking at him.  
“Answer it,” Crawford said. “It’s your wife.”  
Schuldig chuckled.  
Nagi braced himself for a quick save.  
Martz took the phone out and looked at it. Yes, it was his wife, her pretty face smiled back at him from the caller ID photo, making him smile in return. He pressed the answer button then held it to his ear. “Hello, honey-pooh-bear,” he said, then realized where he was and pinkend. They were all looking at him with odd smirks on their faces, except Fujimiya, who was just shoveling his breakfast in like he had not eaten anything in a month.  
It was strange, but after she cooed the words, “Tiggy-wiggy, I have something to tell you,” Martz sort of heard her voice but the words skipped across his brain and he felt very dizzy.  
“And there he goes,” Schuldig announced lightly, surgically dividing his sausage into pieces to match his already sectioned up eggs.  
Nagi locked onto Martz so his unconscious body did not fall out of the chair, then ate another bite of toast.  
Schuldig reached over and retrieved the phone before it fell from Martz’s lank hand. “Hello, beautiful lady,” he cooed like a perverted stalker. “I have to inform you that your husband has passed out and will call you back later.” He hung up, turned off, and tucked the phone into Martz’s breast pocket, then patted the poor man on the cheek.  
“Hunh,” Brad noised and poured himself more coffee.  
Nagi reached over to move Martz’ plate out of the way and let him slump face first onto the table so he could finish his own breakfast.

@ @ @

An hour and a half later, they stood in the sports yard of an ex-high school on an improvised platform. Popup marquees had been erected against the already broiling sun. An array of young and youngish men lined up in sweating ranks of ten by twenty occupied the football field. They wore a mix-match of t-shirts, tank tops and shorts with various running shoes and hiking boots, having come as they were, so to speak. These were the volunteers they were supposed to turn into elite soldiers? Brad wished he had had more coffee. And maybe a handful of his headache pills. And more bullets for his gun.  
The arrival of the black uniforms with the previously illegal insignia set off some emotions in the ranks of Americans and Canadians, which triggered the three-headed dogs. The animals shifted restlessly and whined, then yawned to prove they were more bored than intimidated; scenting fear, but being Shinjuku dogs, not sure why, as there were no giant tentacled cat fish, eagles the size of Cessnas, or Pterodactyls. Someone in the second row of the ranks had a coughing fit and the lead male growled, all three throats, low and guttural, just to burn off some steam.  
“Shush, puppy-kins,” Schuldig ordered in a cutesy tone, his blue eyes wide.  
The dog looked up at him as if he were crazy, then grumbled and settled back down.  
Brad gave Schuldig a skeptical look. There would be no dogs in the house. Especially not over sized three headed Alsatians!  
‘Puppy-kins’, sensing his hostility like any normal dog, looked up at him and growled in triplicate.  
Brad bared his teeth right back at the dog. “Lets get something straight, you and I. One more remark to me like that and you are all bitches,” he snarled in Japanese.  
“They don’t understand you,” Schuldig reminded him.  
However the dog got the gist of it and backed down, tucking his tail up close to the threatened bits.  
“It’s the tone of voice that counts,” Brad said coolly, and focused on the recruits again. “Martz, do your thing,” he ordered.  
Martz appeared to have recovered from his paternity shock for the most part, but was still slow to react by about 3 seconds. He addressed the field of recruits in English in a commanding voice learned but so unlike him. “These dogs are highly trained search animals. You will stand still. It is not necessary for you to know what they are searching for, but cowardice is not becoming in any soldier.”  
/Why don’t we just…?/ Schuldig started.  
/Because Martz needs to use his talent for something,/ Brad thought at him. /And it makes the dogs look good, so anyone being caught will think it is the dogs’ doing. Do take time to read orders occasionally./  
Schuldig thought a few things at him that were bounced right back off the shield of precognition, but made him feel a lot better for having thought them anyway.  
Martz and Nagi unhitched the dogs collars. “Ausfindig!” Martz ordered. The dogs organized into a pattern and started systematically going through the rows of men, sniffing around like mad.  
One of the females suddenly latched two head’s worth of fangs into a calf while the third head barked a sharp alarm. The guy was frozen, horrified. Nagi and Martz hurried over through the parting ranks to haul the guy out of line. Nagi patted him down while he protested. /Schuldig, what have we got here?/  
The telepath latched on the guy’s mind, slowed in finding it by the confusion of thinking around him. /He’s hiding something, but the crowd is thinking too loud./  
“Lock him up, we will deal with him later,” Brad ordered curtly.  
And so the morning went, with three more suspected infiltrators locked up for interrogation later.  
“Not bad out of 600,” Yuuji commented as they walked to the ex-high school’s cafeteria for lunch. “Anything of real interest?”  
“Die of curiosity,” Schuldig snapped.  
Yuuji frowned. “Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed.”  
“Try planet,” the red head stated. “I want to go back to Japan. The minds here are full of such garbage.”  
As they entered the cafeteria, the officer on duty bellowed the information out and everyone fumbled to their feet, coming to attention, arms in the air. “Sieg Heil!” was the deafening chorus.  
“Jesus Christ,” Brad muttered.  
“And you an atheist,” Yuuji muttered back at him.  
“At ease,” Brad’s tone was surly, and everyone went back to their lunch. “It’s using English all day,” he switched back to Japanese amid the babble of the cafeteria. “You can’t avoid it. It’s become an idiom for ‘I can’t believe this bullshit’. What is that smell?” he sniffed the air with interest.  
“Pizza,” Schuldig said, then paused a moment to listen. “Bagged salad, ranch dressing. And strawberry gelatin with ersatz whipped cream. Some one has a sense of humor. Either that, or the previous school lunch crew was all a bunch of die hard Nazies to start with and they kept them on.”  
Brad nodded his head from side to side. “I can handle that.” His apatite was returning.  
“It’s really quite odd,” Schuldig said, glancing around. “That these Amis and Canucks have no talent in so many. How is that even possible?”  
“You have to remember, the program that nurtured Esset`s talents has been going on for over a century and a quarter,” Yuuji said. “And the Americans failed at their attempts to locate even one legitimate telepath.” He glanced at Brad as they found the start of the food line and grabbed trays. “The doctors thought Brad was crazy when he was a kid. My guess is their medical people think all talents are crazy, and drugged or drove them mad accordingly.”  
“Touché,” Brad said dryly.  
Martz had gone to put the dogs away and call his wife, so they were able to continue to talk in Japanese as they made their way to a table and sat down. “After lunch, I want to inspect the transit camp,” Brad said. “The interrogations can wait.”  
“Fun-fun,” Yuuji said, not really enthusiastic about it.  
“Our job there is mostly just to monitor things and make sure no one is getting away with anything,” Nagi said, sitting down. “A lot of these people are using multiple fake or stolen IDs and are habitual liars. They stayed in California because it was so easy for them to get away with things in an overly liberal society. Now that their way of life has been cut off, they see themselves as political refugees and entitled to more of the same. Free housing, free food, free internet, free lawyers to sue the system for more free stuff,” he cautiously tried his gelatin first.  
“I will never understand people who do not want to work,” Schuldig said, biting into his slice of pizza.  
“That’s because you’re a professional assassin,” Brad told him.

@ @ @

“The dogs singled you out because you have something to hide,” Brad kept his tone blasé, with an attitude of been here, done that, bored now. He sat across the small table from the first man the dog had bit.  
“I was just afraid, that’s all,” the American said nervously. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. They’re monsters.”  
“Are you normally afraid of dogs?” Brad asked.  
The man shook his head.  
/His mother had one of those ridiculous little rag mops that bark insanely and piss all over./ Schuldig sat to one side, his arms crossed, knees spread, just as bored. /He’s never been near a real dog./  
/Is he guilty of anything?/  
/Cowardice,/ Schuldig sighed. /Martz?/  
/Something is wrong, but I can’t read minds. He’s lying about something./  
/I’m not going to have you give away your talent just yet by invading his mind,/ Crawford thought at Schuldig. “Tell me why you think the dog reacted to you more than the other recruits who were obviously terrified of something as simple as a dog with three heads. /No, you can not have a puppy!/Everyone was uneasy about them.”  
Schuldig narrowed his eyes at him, but said nothing.  
“I have no idea, Sir,” the recruit said honestly and calmly as possible under the circumstances.  
And there it was, just a flicker, but enough for a telepath to catch the leak without actual contact. “He’s CIA,” Schuldig stated.  
“Probability heightened,” Martz stated as the man’s emotions went into overdrive.  
“Schuldig, do your thing,” Brad told him.  
“Wait, what are you accusing me of?” the man protested. “Just because of a dog?”  
“A dog trained to use its sense of right and wrong in a human being,” Brad said gently.  
“That’s ridiculous!” the man went on. “I’ve been a loyal member of the party for three years, not CIA!” he scoffed, his body language set to back him up, hands on the table, an aggressive tilt to his back in his seat. “What kind of weird ass test is this!”  
Schuldig bared a feral grin. “Your mother’s little rag mop dog, it was called Tipsy,” he said. “You used to kick her when your mother wasn’t looking. She became terrified of you, and wet the floor. Poor little Tipsy.”  
The man stopped short of everything and focused on Schuldig, his face blank as he comprehended the words.  
“A loyal member of the party would know that we do not abuse animals!” Martz stated, extremely offended. “Hunting for food is one thing, but abuse for the hell of it--.”  
“Shhhh,” Brad noised gently, and Martz stopped his tirade, red faced and angry as hell. As an empath, he obviously had not learned yet to quite control the back wash. That meant this guy was going to get violent. Brad wished he had thought to get Nagi in here as well but too many ‘interrogators’ would have been ridiculous. He pulled his gun.  
“Don’t shoot him,” Schuldig warned in annoyance. “I don’t want to get in there with that kind of pain.”  
Brad rolled his eyes and held his fire.  
Martz had pulled his service gun as well, not willing to just sit there and be reactive.  
The guy was frozen in his seat. He did not know how to contend with two guns and a guy who had just pulled some very personal information out of thin air.  
/Martz is having a emo-storm,/ Schuldig let Brad know. /’ He would shoot him and be done with it./  
“Martz, why don’t you get some air,” Brad ordered firmly in German.  
Martz got up, slamming his gun into its holster, and left the room, his jaw set grimly.  
The guy was watching them closely now for any movement. He could have just made a run for it, but they were between him and the door and armed. Plus, he was still gut level stunned at the red head’s statement. How the hell could he have known that?  
“Simple,” Schuldig answered aloud in English. “I am a Nazi super man,” he grinned. Then he purred. “Unfortunately, you are not exactly Captain America. And here you are, in deep fucking shit. Hold still," he grinned. “This is going to hurt.”

@ @ @

By 5 pm, or in this case, 16:00 hours, the other two suspects had been cleared. They had lost their nerve when they realized they were actually in the real military of the real Reich, there were real monsters, and Martz and then Schuldig had picked up on it. They were told to get over it and get back to Supply for their uniforms. Schuldig determined that while they were terrified, they had pinned a lot on this decision. They would settle down.  
The final suspect was afraid his non-practicing Jewish grandfather would be a problem.  
“Performance anxiety,” Schuldig had checked off on a clip board after a few questions. The subject had frowned at that. Schuldig looked up at him. “It goes for other circumstances, get your mind out of the bathroom.”  
The ‘jew’ had sat there, dismayed. Blond, blue eyed, the right head shape, the right body measurements; he was not happy.  
“What was your grandfather’s name?” Brad asked quietly.  
“Aaron Goldschmidt, Sir,” the guy said, glum. “Mother’s side.”  
“And yet you joined the American Nazi Party.”  
“I had no idea,” he protested. “My mother used her first husband’s last name on my birth certificate,” he frowned, the issue obviously a serious one with him. There was his sense of betrayal, Schuldig picked up from the periphery of his thoughts. The secret his mother had deliberately kept, and only told him when she found out what he done.  
“Tricky,” Schuldig said. “I suppose some women get a little confused with all this feminism going on.” A subtle nudge to show he was on the subject’s side, to keep him thinking on the correct track.  
“Do you know where your Mother’s father was born?” Brad asked.  
The guy shrugged a little, tense, not sure what this was going to cost him. “Some place called Elfletz, if I remember it. I know it was elf-something.”  
“Elsfleth, Lower Saxony,” Nagi said after a quick search on his laptop. “Your blood tests show no sign of a Jewish mitochondrial connection,” he looked at the soldier as he relayed this info.  
The would-be soldier blinked at him. He did not understand why the Jap was involved in this, or wearing the uniform of a German Nationalist. It went against his beliefs in the party, but then…  
“It’s quite possible your maternal grandfather was a ‘rat’,” Brad stated. “A starving german soldier who took a jewish name, using the Red Cross and Catholic ‘ratlines’ to escape the post war genocide. More than likely an SS man, as most who escaped the genocide were.”  
The guy blank faced. “I’m not a jew?”  
“Trust me, they wouldn’t have you. Their DNA tests are very strict.” Brad smirked. Schuldig had relayed the man’s relief.  
The young man shifted in the chair, weighing something in his mind, hesitating, then going with it anyway. “Those dogs—how did they know? More brain space or something?”  
“Training,” Nagi said dismissively.  
“You’re dismissed, soldier,” Brad said calmly. “Go get your uniform.”  
When he was gone, Schuldig slumped on the table, his head on his arms. “I want a long soak in that hot tub at the mansion.”  
“What are we going to do with the CIA guy?” Nagi asked, uncapping a bottle of green tea he had on the table next to his laptop and taking a long drink.  
Brad gave it some consideration, then decided. “Since we are going for a kinder, gentler SS, lets wrap him up and ship him back to his people. Along with a full report of his activities for the past three years, as discovered by our ‘interrogation’. Schuldig, make him forget the whole episode from the dog on.”  
“This means I have to write that damned report, doesn’t it?” his lover gave him the stink eye.  
“Dictate it while you soak in that hot tub,” Brad told him. “Nagi will type it up.”  
“Only if I get the hot tub, too,” Nagi countered.  
Schuldig frowned. “This means I have to wear bathing shorts.”  
“Eugh, yes,” Nagi looked at him in horror.

TBC 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

  
The transit center had been moved from the old city of Los Angeles to San Bernardino. If anything, the air here was more hellish when they stepped out of the Mercedes luxury van. Oddly, the main station was what had first been a nunnery/hospital, St Bernardine Asistencia, then remodeled into a huge regional hospital. An ideal set up for housing people on an in/out basis. Brad, with Schuldig and Sarazawa flanking him, stood on the side walk looking up at the north side modern face of the building.   
“Hospital,” Sarazawa said, hands in his slacks pockets under his open uniform jacket.   
Brad’s mouth twitched. “Yep.”   
“I’m not going in there,” Schuldig stated.   
Brad looked around. It was what had been an older upper class neighborhood with established and kept up houses, practically mini-mansions, only recently going to seed as their owners aged past care and finances. He turned to the driver. “We’ll set up quarters in one of those houses,” he waved a vague hand. “Anything large enough and away from the noise will do.”   
“Yes, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the driver said, taking out his phone and making a call.   
“Camp’s over that way,” Sarazawa noted the park on the other side of the parking lot with a tip of his chin.  
The trees, grass and benches were gone, replaced by military tents and wire mesh fencing attached to posts set in concrete. Four observation towers were raised above the level of the fence height. The fence tops were rimmed with razor wire. While the more vulnerable or elderly deportees were housed in the former hospital, the more annoyingly healthy were dormered here in the camp, which was staffed with equal parts Japanese and Esset troops. Immaculate white uniforms trimmed in gold vied with immaculate black uniforms trimmed in silver for authority, cornered by four observation towers.   
It was bedlam. Days after the camp was set up, the refugees had segregated themselves by what ever loyalties they felt they had; either nationality, skin or religion. Rather than cooperate with their being removed politely and safely to the remainder of the USA, or their legal origins, a good 80% started to fight and protest. Hunger strikes; chanting; refusing to do anything to help themselves be moved along; spitting and threatening; brandishing rough made weapons; and throwing their own feces. The Japanese government had given up attempting to reason peacefully with them on the matter. The new land owners were not going to be emotionally blackmailed into supporting a useless population of parasites and petty criminals who had refused to appreciate the last two governments they had lived under.   
The UN officiously offered to send in a couple of thousand troops to assist. After all they were used to handling refugee camps. Experts at it, in fact, since none of their camps ever seemed to close. Very much aware of that organization’s past crimes against women and children, the Japanese PM warned them to keep their damned boots off Japanese ground. At the PMs request, Esset stepped in.   
The protests were quickly reduced to hunger strikes and chanting after a few bursts of semi-automatic weapon fire, and the burying of one shit-flinging protestor up to his neck in a pit of portable toilet dumpings.   
The Japanese commander immediately publically apologized with deep shame and sincerity—then invited the guilty Nordics for an off duty booze up.   
“Still too noisy,” Brad said in Japanese, looking down the rows of tents and strategically placed port-a-potty cabins from one of the towers. A group of people dressed like giant toddlers in oversized t-shirts, huge shorts and in many of the women’s cases, unfortunate stretch pants, were yelling some chant and shaking fists in the air. “How long have these people been here?”  
The Japanese officer handed him a clip board with the figures on it. “They keep obstructing attempts to organize them into the buses for transfer to the trains. We tried sedating them in and putting them on the train. The first Mexican group managed to take over a train when they recovered from the sedatives and killed two American rail employees. We are still investigating the murders, but its doubtful we’ll ever find them,” he looked grimly at the crowd below.   
“I’ve read the reports,” Brad said calmly. “Clear your men out, Colonel, I will take responsibility with your leaders.”  
The Japanese Colonel hesitated, a little worried. “That will cut your troops in half, Herr Oberstleutnant. These people—they’re violent and dangerous. And so far, our government has instructed us, including your people, to refrain from bloodshed,” he felt the need to remind the stern faced foreigner.  
“Yes, and it will free up some room in these towers,” Brad said, trying not to be too sarcastic. “Let the SS do its thing, Colonel,” he met the man’s wary eyes with a sardonic smile. Then turning in dismissal he addressed an Esset soldier. “Cut off all food, water and bathing facilities in the camp but the portable toilets for our ‘guests’ immediately,” he ordered in German. “If they want to eat, they will get on the buses and go back to their own countries. Where is a loud speaker.”  
The soldier handed him a hand held. Brad looked it over for the control panel, then turned it on and held it up to his mouth. “Attention deportees,” he stated in deliberately German accented English. “The Japanese government is at great expense returning you to your own countries. Here the Japanese are feeding and housing you, caring for your medical needs, and making sure you are treated with respect. And in return, you show your origins by acting like ungrateful savages. Because of this, you are now dealing solely with the SS. And, as you may have noticed, we are not a charitable organization,” he growled the last and laughed cruelly.  
The yelling and shouting had gradually stopped during this speech, and now the crowd stared up at him, many opened mouthed and confused, as he handed the loud speaker back to the SS soldier. “Remove your people, Colonel,” Brad said calmly in Japanese. “Tell your commander we will be expecting the next consignment of refugees the day after tomorrow. SS soldiers will take over security on the trains. This camp will be cleared by tomorrow evening; clean and ready for the next guests.”  
Schuldig mentally skimmed the crowd. /Nicely played. They are starting to realize they are in deep shit./  
“Fucking Nazies!” a man yelled angrily in accented English. “You don’t belong here, we do!”   
The chanting and fist shaking started up again.  
Brad smiled, “Excellent,” he said loudly. “So you do know who you are dealing with.” /Schuldig, make note of that one. Have Nagi dispose of him. And remember, no bloodshed./  
Schuldig smiled broadly, marking the man’s mental signature.   
“Soldier,” Brad said to one of the Esset men. “Fire over their heads to remind them we have guns.” He looked down at them in derision.   
“America is ours! Make America Mexico again!” some of them were yelling.   
The soldier put paid to that with a burst of fire from an H&K MP5 close enough over their heads to put some extra ventilation holes in the tents and portable toilets.  
“Morons,” Schuldig laughed. “Do they even know they are no longer in ‘America`?”  
“Not our problem,” Brad said succinctly. “Our job is to shovel them back into their hell hole and shut the gate,” he turned to walk down the narrow tower steps.   
Their driver was waiting for them with the door to the Mercedes van open. Once in the air-conditioned chilled comfort, Brad heaved a tired sigh. He had not slept well. His talent had flung him into so many what-if nightmares, he might have over dosed on his medication if he had not had Schuldig to finally shut him down at 2 am.   
“The house you requested is ready, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the driver said. “The hard copy files will be moved in by this afternoon.”  
“Alright,” Brad said laconically. “Take us there.”

@ @ @

The house turned out to be around the block on the older side of the once nunnery/hospice, set well back from the street with 7 foot wrought iron fencing around it.   
“Defensible enough, but that looks like lathe-and-plaster era to me,” Sarazawa said.   
“We won’t be facing any high power weapon,” Brad looked in past the soldier as he opened the front door and held out a new set of keys from the freshly changed locks. There was an entry with a staircase off to one side.   
“The code is on the tag, Sirs,” he said, pressing the number into the little keypad on the wall inside the door.   
Brad walked in, taking out his phone. “Nagi, pack things up, we are moving headquarters, near the camp. The driver will be back for you.”  
“Fine and how are you?” Nagi answered sarcastically. Then it sounded as if he had held a hand over his mouth to speak into the phone quietly. “Martz is a total martinet. He’s got these recruits going through paces like an old school drill sergeant. Five of them have already broken into tears. And that was just from building the obstacle course.”  
“What did he do about that?” Brad smiled.   
“He started crying with them and told them they were breaking his heart; the shame of such men, the fact that they even had balls, etc. Then he yelled at them to pull themselves together and get back to work before they embarrass everyone as well as just their grandmothers. They were so shamed!” Nagi cracked up laughing.   
“And Fujimiya?” Brad asked in an arch glance at Sarazawa.  
“Well enough. He mostly just stands around behind Martz plotting everyone’s horrible death. The dogs seem okay with him, so he’s holding the leashes. As soon as the course is done, we’re going to start off the recruits in teams, count to ten and unleash the dogs. Bed time is going to be 21 hundred hours, and then we will wake them up at 5 for another run of the course before breakfast.”  
“Just don’t start putting live grenades on their helmets,” Brad warned. “Soldiers with damaged hearing can not obey orders.”   
Nagi snorked. Literally snorked. Obviously he had picked up some serious sadism somewhere in his tender youth, although Brad could not possibly think where. “I assume you want to leave Martz to deal with the recruits, and bring Fujimiya with?”  
Brad pondered this a brief moment. “Might as well. And I have a little task for you. We want these people to cooperate with getting the hell out of this camp and on their way to their homelands tomorrow. But no bloodshed, as per our directive from the Japanese ministry.”  
“Got yah,” Nagi said coolly. “Piece of cake.”  
“That boy has picked up some very bad habits,” Schuldig said as Brad tucked his phone away into the inner pocket of his uniform jacket.   
Brad smirked. “Just point out our ‘example’ to him when he gets here. I won’t spoil the surprise for you.”  
“Now that’s just mean, Brad,” Yuuji said. He’d been looking around the house and now came back into the hallway. “The driver wants to know if we will have staff?”  
“No,” Brad said. “Have a car delivered, with AC, for our use, and I will drive myself. We need all available trained SS hands in the camp, not futzing around in the office looking officious.”   
“Oh, goody, now we can play naked football without anyone dying of shock,” Schuldig said with sarcastic cheer.   
“No more ‘Torchwood’ reruns for you,” Yuuji said darkly.   
“There had better be a dishwasher,” Schuldig stated and went to find the kitchen.   
“Is there a dishwasher?” Brad asked Yuuji as they walked down the hall, looking into the double pocket doors of what had been a parlor at the turn of the last century.   
“Yes, remodeled recently with full mod-cons. But I can unplug it, and pretend we can’t find a repair man,” Yuuji offered with a grin.   
“Don’t you dare,” Brad warned.   
Yuuji caught his shoulder and turned him into a room that lead out onto a back porch solarium. “About our little arrangement,” he said quietly, looking Brad in the eyes.   
Brad leaned back on the wall beside the door and looked back, a slight smile on his lips. “Under the circumstances, it would be difficult to follow through.”  
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve tranq darted Fujimiya,” Yuuji said seriously, putting a hand on the wall up by Brad’s head, leaning in a little more.  
“I’ve enough on my mind right now with out romantic tanglements,” Brad informed him kindly.  
“I know that look,” Yuuji said. “You’ve been walking a tightrope ever since we got back from Shinjuku and found ourselves in this mess. You’ve closed down. Half the time Schuldig isn’t even there with you; I’ve been watching him sulk at your back. You’re all alone in that head of yours. If you won’t let me make love to you, at least talk to me.”  
Brad smiled a little more, recognizing that shift in tone. The compelling one. “Enough of your attempts at sticky disgusting mind control, Sarazawa,” he put his fingertips on Yuuji’s chest and gave a little push that did nothing to move the man away. “We need something to get us out of here and I need to sort out the threads of this mess before I can see the right path to take,” he confided. “We get this transit camp running, we leave Martz with the recruits, and we move on. Preferably to something more in our line of work. Griefeldt seems to think that he has the bull by the horns. He’s forgetting the damned goats.”  
Yuuji turned this over in his mind a few times. “You think they side lined us for a reason?”  
“Either that or I’m not picking up some ultimate ulterior motive,” Brad frowned. “We’re in charge of training combat troops on the borders of two nations, ostensibly to help a third clean up its rightfully paid for territory. What am I not seeing? And Esset has no idea how much of my talent I have recovered.”  
“Well isn’t this a pretty picture,” Schuldig poked his nose in the doorway and looked at both of them suspiciously.   
Yuuji grinned and stayed right where he was, then leaned an inch closer.   
Schuldig glared at him.   
“You don’t scare me, I’ve been glared at by the world champ,” Yuuji said. “We were discussing business and you heard it, so put the lid back on the green bottle.”  
“You two are up to something,” the redhead accused.   
“We’re Esset, we’re always up to something,” Yuuji reminded him, then backed off, his hand falling to his side. “Did you find a frilly apron to go with the dishwasher?”  
Schuldig gave him a ‘you are so dead’ look and then focused on Brad. “Well?” he demanded.   
“As soon as I know, you will,” Brad promised, reaching up to put a hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze. “Now let’s all act like we are mature, competent individuals who can work and play well with others, shall we?”  
“I can act. You two are amateurs,” Yuuji said, shifting his lanky body to go out the door. “Let me guess, file cabinets,” he added dully, padding down the hall.   
“He’s getting psychic from hanging around with you,” Schuldig sniped at Brad.  
Brad moved to kiss him on the lips lightly. “Settle down,” he stroked the slightly sunburned cheek. “And be more careful in this damned hot sun. You’ll blister.”  
Schuldig leaned his head on Brad’s jaw, a hand going to the plain black tie. “Can we go back to Japan?”  
“I’ll see, Babe,” Brad promised, pulling him into a one arm hug and kissing him again on the temple, dislodging that stupid hat so it sat at a precarious angle. “Just hold on to your temper and don’t pick fights just to blow off steam, okay?”  
“Okay,” Schuldig sulked, catching the hat before it fell off. “But I get to kill a lot of people,” he said seriously.  
Brad laughed softly. “Okay,” he agreed, even though they both know that was not necessarily true.

@ @ @

At around 3 am in the morning, the dogs stationed at the base of each of the towers started to sit up and shift, then whine.   
Nagi looked at his watch, then signaled Schuldig, who closed his eyes and concentrated.   
Everyone in the camp perceived a foul wind begin to move through the area. /Charnel #5/, Schuldig grinned at Nagi, who was making an evil face at him for the false scent. It was enough to wake the dead, and smelt like it.  
On their end, the guards signaled the dogs to do something they were trained to do, bark viciously in order to instill more fear in a human target. Pretty soon all four three-headed dogs on duty were barking and howling just for the doggly excess of it. A few coyotes and wild dogs in the neighborhood joined in.   
The camp was awake now, people peeking out of tents, voices yelling ‘what’s going on’ and ‘what the hell is that smell?’  
/Step two,/ Schuldig signaled and suddenly everyone lost their balance. The earth seemed to rock and crack under them, and the stench increased. The dogs were ordered by hand signal to stop barking abruptly.   
“Now,” Nagi said into his phone.   
The lights in the camp went out completely. The solders started calling “What is this!” “What is happening?” and “Halt, who goes there!” in increasing nervousness.  
Schuldig concentrated, and despite the difficulty of separating minds on this level of mass control, managed to get a few of the women to start screaming in fear. This triggered the rest, as well as a spate of praying.  
“Order them to shut up,” Nagi said calmly into his phone.  
The loudspeakers were hand held battery powered. “Attention: Everyone stay in your tents and be quiet. Stay in your tents and shut up! Oh—Gott in Himmel, Vas is loss?!” The loud speaker cut out.   
/Wow, nice voice work,/ Schuldig commented.  
/Yeah, I thought so,/ Nagi agreed. /We had five readings until we got the right level of O.M.G.W.T.F.S.M.P.*/ “Alright, my turn now,” he said quietly into the phone. “On my command, only the tower search lights to sweep the area at a slightly higher rate of pass.”  
Schuldig lead Nagi’s mind to the man Brad had ordered targeted. As long as Nagi could mentally picture what he was doing, he could focus his power. Schuldig contrived to light up the tent the man was in based on the man’s memory and position him by his current thinking.   
With this telepathically transmitted version of virtual reality, Nagi slowly clenched his fingers together into a fist.   
Anyone next to that tent would hear it. A sudden gasped, strangled crying out; strange sounds of something being squashed; of the muffled, squelched snapping of long bones, one by one, and the man’s last pleas before shock killed him.  
Schuldig picked up on the closest mind to their victim and enhanced the woman’s hearing by adding some of his own special effects until he had to escape her mind as she was locking down in abject horror. /And we have our witness./  
Nagi finished his task, and pressed the mute key on his phone again, un-muting it. “Sound general alarm.”  
The camp lights snapped on and the alarms wailed, the dogs barked madly and howled in protest against the noise, the ‘foul wind’ receded. The klieg lights flooded over the park, blinding people. Soldiers were detailed to search the camp, the dogs frantic with excitement and straining their leashes. Refugees were rushing around outside, yelling and screaming despite the orders to stay in their tents.   
“Hah, we give them bedlam for bedlam,” Schuldig crowed. “What is it the communists say, ‘by any means necessary’?”  
“That was disgusting,” Nagi shook his hand as if to dislodge the feeling, but he was grinning, too.   
Schuldig looked at ‘the shrimp’, who was now his match inch for inch. “Perhaps I should be frightened you can do that,” he said, suddenly serious.   
Nagi shook his head. “Brad’s the only one who can give me orders like that,” he said sincerely. “I’m still me, Schuldig, just older. I don’t do shit like that on my own,” he stated. “And to be honest, I missed you guys.” He flicked his head to get his hair out of his eyes, then took his hat off to push the hair back under. “Things got too damned serious.” He resettled his hat with both hands, not meeting the redhead’s eyes.  
“If you’d came with us, you’d still be sixteen, and your crazy girlfriend would be way creepy child molester older,” Schuldig said. “Plus, you’ll have been just as totally out of all this as we are. Now you’re the expert on all this future bullshit,” he grinned.   
“Shuu, don’t try to be sympathetic,” Nagi warned. “It’s disturbing.”

@ @ @

The Japanese Colonel was impressed. “It would seem they are fleeing.”   
“Yes,” Brad said. “Amazing what you can get done when you call in the ‘Nazis’, isn’t it?” he smiled wryly.   
The refugees were practically pushing and shoving to get on the train. The body had been found just before dawn, and artfully displayed by ‘accident’. A soldier was duly yelled at for stepping on the corner of the sheet, uncovering its crushed and distorted upper body.  
Combined with the nightmare display hours earlier, the refugees were convinced there was more to this awful place than just three-headed dogs and Nazis. And like the self professed proud migrants they were, they fled rather than stand their ground and fight. Not one of them was interested in solving the problem, just in running away from it.   
“Even more amazing is that none of this would have happened if the Americans had taken better care of their own country,” the Colonel said.   
“True,” Brad agreed, not really caring. “We’ll be ready for the next group tomorrow morning. They will be out in 24 hours from now on. There will be one meal, a chance to shower, and that is it. The medically needy will be transported by plane as soon as the Doctors confirm they are ready. From now on all medical support will be triage only, unless there is a real emergency.”   
“Or a baby coming. No stopping that,” the Colonel said, then half turned to him. “We’ve had a few try to claim that their babies were born under Japanese rule and they should be allowed to stay. Japan has no such rule. They keep insisting that this region is still America and subject to American law, yet they want to make it part of Mexico, a country they walked away from. These people all seem be mentally ill.”  
Brad shifted his head slightly in an agreeing move. “Don’t trouble yourself with it, Colonel. When this deportation is over and done, there will be no need to deal with them other than to shoot them if they try to crawl back.”  
The trick would be to convince the next batch to leave just as effectively. This would get boring and if there was anything Brad could not stand, it was being bored. 

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

  
“No,” Sarazawa Ishida said flatly, flicking the morning paper to settle the pages again. He liked his news on paper, the old fashioned way. Not from the blasted internet, which he knew well enough could not be trusted not to change from one minute to the next. His days a welter of paperwork and phone calls, he liked his mornings quiet.   
His wife made a face at him that he could not see because of said papers. “Just to attend, Husband, not to participate. It’s only a little conference,” she wheedled over pinched fingers.   
“No,” he stated.   
“Hon,” she lowered her pitch just a little to let him know she was not going to play the good little Japanese wife game with him any further. “Someone has to keep up with these outsiders.”  
The paper lowered. “No. Let Corporate Intelligence handle it.”  
“Which is how we ended up not knowing about the talent enhancing implant the Jews came up with!” she slapped her hand on the table.   
“Wife, you are at that age. Do not succumb to absurdity,” he countered.   
“It’s a bloody human genetics conference and I am a doctor of human bio-genetics. Don’t you think for the good of the Brotherhood, I should be kept up on these things!”  
“Do not raise your voice in this house!” he said, raising his voice.  
“May I remind you the deed is in my name, too! I will scream my head off in this house if it suits me!” she did so.   
He blinked at her. Then he put his paper up in front of his face again.   
“Coward!” she yelled at him.   
“Wife, do you want a good spanking?” he inquired through gritted teeth.   
“No. I want to go to this conference!” she sulked.  
“Chieko,” he tried reason, the paper coming down again. “Do you recall how we met?”  
She sunk a little in her chair and pouted, raising her pitch girlishly again. “I snuck out to a conference in Cairo and you rescued me from the Iraqis five months later. You were my brave, handsome knight in non-reflective tactical armor.”  
“You were down to eighty pounds and looked like an animated mummy,” he grumbled.  
“You must have seen something you liked,” she said wryly.   
The paper snapped down completely now. “This isn’t about our marriage, Chieko-chan. It’s about your safety.”   
“What could possibly happen to me at a medical research conference in Prague? It’s not like I will be going in full uniform with an entourage of SS bodyguards, waving the flag while a band plays Deutschland uber alles and little children to scatter flowers in my path!” she threw her hands up, leaning forward in her chair with her sarcasm.  
“That would be funny,” he grinned, momentarily caught off guard. Then he frowned sternly again. “What can happen is the same thing that happened last time. You are not going, and that is final.”  
“Yes, dear,” she said with a finality that hung in the air like the sword of Damocles, and got up to do the dishes.

@ @ @ 

Two weeks. Two weeks of going back and forth between the training camp and the deportation camp and dealing with people who should not be allowed to breed. Fifteen more of the new recruits had turned out to be either CIA, or NGO spies. It almost confirmed the old joke that the American Nazi party was 30% FBI. Brad had started just shooting them. One a day at this rate. Like pulling weeds. Boring.   
Yuuji sighed and stretched from the tips of his fingers to the ends of his toes in the large bed. “You should be bored more often.” He laced his fingers on his abdomen and mentally kicked aside the urge to light up a cigarette. Having finally gotten what he wanted, he wanted more, and hoped for another go after they recovered. He smiled, eyes closed, letting the cool air from the AC drift across his deliciously limp and sweaty body. Bliss.   
“I’ll have to change the sheets, or you’ll have Schuldig following you around like one of those damned dogs,” Brad groused, shifting beside him.   
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the thought,” Yuuji responded dully. “Way to ruin the post coital glow,” he turned on his side to prop himself up on an elbow.   
Brad smiled at him smugly.   
“What’s so funny?” Yuuji loved that smile.  
Brad reached over to run a hand over Yuuji’s muscular chest. “Never tell you.” He smacked him lightly on that taunt belly.   
“Aya’s going to walk in that door any minute, right?” Yuuji half joked, half feared.   
“I just don’t feel like telling you everything in my head,” he half rolled over to get his glasses off the bedside table and put them on. He turned back to look at Yuuji again. “Besides, wasn’t it you that said mystery was the spice of life? Try living in a world where there is no mystery, not for long. I can at least spice things up for others.” He sidled closer to him again.  
“You’re evil,” Yuuji caressed his cheek.   
“I attract some very strange lovers,” Brad still smiled.   
“Oh, really?” Yuuji laughed curtly.   
“Yes, really,” Brad tackled him. 

@ @ @

“I hate you,” Schuldig stated.   
“I know,” Brad straightened his tie and scowled at his reflection. “Hugo Boss or not, I am getting sick of this uniform.”  
“Hello, I’m mad at you!” Schuldig insisted angrily.  
“Mmm,” Brad buttoned up his jacket.  
Schuldig sighed loudly. “So when are we going to get the hell out of this mess? I am so fucking tired of scanning the recruits for spies.”  
“The problem is we need to complete that particular mission, like it or not,” Brad stated. “The transit camp is running to capacity, but the Standart is going to make or break Esset in America, and we need to make certain they are all loyal. Martz can’t handle it on his own.” He frowned slightly, putting his wallet in his jacket. “I’m afraid it’s going to be years before he can keep his shit together on this sort of assignment. ‘He means well’ has always been a brick in the road to disaster, and he does mean well,” he said grimly.  
Schuldig slipped his arms around Brad’s waist from behind and held onto him tightly. “I am still mad at you,” he said, his cheek pressed to Brad’s shoulder. “Tell Griefeldt his nephew needs a minder and rummage around in the recent graduates. Doesn’t that asshole’s mother know all the talents inside and out? Ask her for a referral.”   
Brad pursed his lips slightly. “I could ask Traugott; she would know better.”  
Schuldig’s jaw tightened. “What is it with you and that thing?”   
Brad took him by the wrists and drew him off to turn around and put them back behind him, looking the few inches down into gorgeous blue eyes. “If it weren’t for ‘that thing’, we wouldn’t be as free as we are. I don’t want to be stuck there, locked up in case something happens to me, until I’m so old I can barely move and just sit there with tubes up my nose and mutter prophecies. Any more than you want to spend the rest of your life in other people’s heads.”  
“Except yours,” Schuldig corrected.   
“You’re insane,” Brad kissed him on the tip of his nose. “I’m surrounded by crazy people.”  
“Because you drive everyone around you mad,” Schuldig accused. “You sent me off to vet recruits while you banged that blond slut and I am so mad at you!” He grappled Brad tighter, face to his neck.  
“If you tell Fujimiya I banged his blond slut, I will ship you home to Rosencruez and bang him some more, are we clear?” Brad said, suddenly cold.   
Schuldig froze. “I wasn’t going to,” he said quietly, looking away.   
“Yes, you were,” Brad caught him by the face, holding those cheeks in the palms of his hands. “I know you’re jealous, I know it hurts, I know. But I do love you, and being irrational about it is going to destroy everything, do you understand?”  
“It’s not irrational to not want the man you love to cheat on you!” Schuldig insisted sadly.   
“It’s not cheating if you know about it,” Brad said stubbornly.   
Schuldig sulked. “You are the crazy one here.”   
Brad wrapped his arms around the red head and kissed him fervently. “Absolutely,” he agreed. “No loosing your grip and telling Fujimiya, are we clear?”  
Schuldig nuzzled his neck and sighed. “Very, mein mann.”  
Brad caressed his scalp and rocked him for a bit, then kissed him again. “I do love you,” he murmured. “You were the one thing I needed when I thought I was living dead. You gave me back everything. My life, my talent, everything. You have been the sweetest thing in my life since I was told Yuuji had died. That changes very little now that he is back.”  
“You manipulative shit,” Schuldig retorted sullenly. “Thinking I would fall for romantic, sensitive crap like that coming from you.”  
Brad bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. “It worked, though, didn’t it?”  
“I hate you,” the red head kissed him. “Now get us out of this hellhole backwater job, or I will slit your throat while you sleep,” his eyes were beautifully dangerous.   
“If I didn’t have to go kill a few people this afternoon, I would throw your ass on that bed and show you exactly how much of that romantic, sensitive crap was bullshit,” he gave Schuldig a kiss and pushed him away, reluctance briefly on his face.  
“What’s the matter, can’t get it up again?” Schuldig taunted.   
“No, I’m punishing you for being a brat,” Brad informed him and opened the bedroom door. “Out.”

@ @ @

“Herr Oberleutnant,” the soldier paused, panting to catch his breath. He had chased Yuuji down on the training track at the ex-high school. “Phone. Call. Home. Office. Urgent.”   
Yuuji looked at him archly as the trainees continued to run past. “Are you alright?”   
“They said,” he gulped air, “it was urgent. You did not answer your phone. Sir.” He was recovering, but still, it did not look well in front of the troops Yuuji was supposed to be helping to train to be this same ‘super soldier’.   
Yuuji was wearing a muscle t-shirt and track shorts. Where he was supposed to put a phone, he had no idea. He took the phone the soldier held out to him. “Virus,” he answered, and waited for the voice recognition to okay him.   
“Yuu-chan,” his father said. “Your mother has gone AWOL.”  
Despite the hellish sunshine, Yuuji felt the blood in his veins freeze up. “Not—Shinjuku?” he said, his voice catching in his throat.  
“Frau Traugott says not,” his father said. “She wanted to go to a genetics convention or some such nonsense in Prague. I forbade her. Naturally, at her age, she went.”  
Yuuji wondered if his father realized how sexist that was, then decided he absolutely did and meant it. “Okaaay….”  
“She left a note,” his father said. “She would call me when she had checked into the hotel. Her whole itinerary is listed. She has not called. The only thing she left out was the fake ID she was traveling under. It’s been two days. Her chip stopped transmitting two hours ago.”  
“Gods,” Yuuji put a hand to his head. He felt dizzy. “Are you going after her?”   
“No,” his father stated. “Schwarz is. Her itinerary is on the fax machine there. Leave immediately.”  
“Hai,” Yuuji said. But his father had already ended the call. 

@ @ @ 

“Not staying behind,” Nagi warned.   
“Then who the hell is going to run this mess?” Brad was packing. He certainly was not going to wear the uniform on this job, and left it hanging in the closet. He had no idea what the atmosphere was right now in the country Germany had run roughshod over in the ‘good old days’ and certainly did not want any interference with the mission.  
“Martz, remember? Blond, blue eyed, Nordic ideal SS pin up boy?” he said sarcastically. “He can hold the fort—forts—for a few days while we round up Dr. Sarazawa. Why did they even let her run loose in the first place? With everyone else dead or senile, she’s practically the Hive Mother of Esset’s talent program. She should be locked up in the lab permanently or something,” he flicked his hair out of his eyes.   
“Which is exactly why we are going to go rescue her from what ever mess she has gotten into,” Brad stated, not saying a thing about the whole ‘locked up for the good of the Brotherhood” thing.   
“Then I’m coming with, because you might just need someone to drop a building on someone.” Nagi insisted.   
“All right! But if this place all goes to hell while we’re gone, I am blaming you,” Brad retorted.   
“You already know that isn’t going to happen.”  
“Do I?” Brad shoved his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his glasses to shoot him an angry look. “Frankly, I haven’t wanted to look.”   
“And you see what went to hell while you were gone,” was Nagi’s answer.   
“Will you two stop fighting?” Schuldig came in and dumped a basket of laundry from the dryer on the bed to sort through. He snatched a pair of skimpy burgundy colored bikini briefs up and shook them at Brad. “Really?” he demanded.   
Brad grabbed them and stuffed them in his suit jacket pocket. Then he started packing his grooming kit on the dresser top.   
Schuldig glared at his back, and started folding the rest of the pile of white undergarments.   
Nagi crossed his arms. “You have no shame, do you?” he asked Brad.  
Brad crossed the room in three strides, grabbed the now full grown young man by the back of his collar and put him out of the room with a stinging back handed swat on the butt and a slam of the door.  
Schuldig exhaled a huff of disbelief. “He’s not 16 any more, Brad.”  
Brad snorted, zipping up the kit bag and tossing it in his suitcase.   
“You don’t get it, do you? He never expected to be abandoned again. He’s been walking on broken glass and it’s your fault. He’s missed five years of mentoring and rebellion and showing you he’s grown up.”  
“Well what the hell am I supposed to do?” Brad snapped. “It was cute when he was little. Now it’s just flat out insubordination and asking for a beat down.”  
“Dummy,” Schuldig folded and rolled up a t-shirt. “He idolized you and one day you were gone, end of the dream. It might not be the kind of thing you classify as love, but his adored big brother dropped off the face of his world, missing in action, and he’s trying to find that place back with you, with us. ”   
Brad stopped and turned to look at him. “Alright, so what the hell do I do about it?” he snapped without conviction. A lot of what the idiot telepath said was hitting the mark all too well. He’d missed something, too. Something he stuffed into a mental closet and threw away the key to immediately on realizing it.   
Schuldig took a deep breath and let it out slow, organizing what he was about to say to try and avoid Brad’s vicious tendency to sarcasm. “Something he said the other day gave it away. He’s one of the most technically intelligent and physically powerful people on Earth, but you pulled him out of that trashcan. You gave him a ground wire. He said he would not do anything major on his own but on your order only. Let him back on the team,” he looked over at Brad. “He’s still Nagi.”  
Brad’s shoulders slumped. “I should have taken him with us in the first place,” he closed his suitcase, then realized he had caught a shirt cuff in the rim and opened it again, flicking it in and shutting the case again to latch it and spin the locks.   
“Empty nest syndrome?” Schuldig teased.   
Brad pulled his gun and aimed at him.   
Schuldig held up his hands, going paler.   
Brad’s eyes narrowed, but he put the gun away. “Finish packing.”  
“I dare you to give those pan-ties back in front of Fu-ji-mi-ya,” Schuldig said in a quiet little sing-song voice.   
“I’m tempted to see if Nagi can actually kill Fujimiya, or if it would end in another big temporal hole in the world,” Brad said, checking the dresser drawers.  
“Oh mein gott, do not even make that a thing in my head,” Schuldig complained, his undergarments now a neatly regimented section in the suitcase he was packing.   
Brad grinned evilly, knowing it was too late.  
Schuldig pointed to the tidy pile next to Brad’s locked up case. “Pack your own damned underwear.” 

@ @ @ 

Sarazawa Chieko had woken up in a sparsely furnished room with bars on the window. “Damn it!” she swore, her mouth dry from the sedative they had knocked her out with.   
The black wig she had been wearing was on the bedside stand, along with the bug-eye looking big black sunglasses that had covered the third of her face the wig’s fringe had not. The sponge pads she had been holding in her cheeks to make her face rounder were gone.   
She grabbed one of the cheap ‘hospital’ tissues out of the box next to them and wiped at her face, looking at the results. The make up she had sponged on to darken her skin was still there, the pillow case was also smeared with it. Her clothing, thankfully, was still intact. A little frisson of creepy went through her as she shelved that horrific memory.   
As she sat up, a somewhat painful pulling of the skin on her lower back alerted her to something very wrong. She reached back and felt under her loosely fashioned knit top. What felt like a bandage and gauze pad was stuck there.   
They’d taken out her tracking chip.   
“How the fucking hell did you bastards find me!” she exclaimed.   
She had been in line at Customs, normal as could be, with other passengers from her commercial flight, waiting as patiently as the anti-terrorism long lines and slower than necessary officials would allow for. After an hour and all of five steps forward, someone had jabbed her in the arm and a curtain of black had come down like a bag over her head.   
Sure enough, there was another bandage over a needle prick in her arm. “Damn it!” she swore again.   
Ishida was probably laughing his ass off right now.  
She sat down on the bed and sighed heavily.   
There was a plastic pitcher of water with an inverted cup on a flimsy folding table. A five gallon bucket toilet, with a snap on lidded seat, the kind also used for camping or emergencies, was under the table. Nothing in the room was sturdy enough to use as a weapon. And no sign of a camera or listening device. A cheap on the run operation? They had her, they did not care what she did or said. What did that mean?  
She slid off the bed onto her knees and lifted the blankets and thin mattress to look under it. Flimsy. Practically chop sticks. She doubted the cot would last a month under normal usage. Temporary. She got up and walked around the room, then took the cup off the pitcher, opened it and smelled. She poured a little into the cup and carefully tasted it. Nothing was in it that she could detect. There was only one way to find out. She poured a full cup and drank it slowly, walking around the room to rehydrate faster and clear her thinking, or black out again.   
At first it had crossed her mind that her husband had pulled a fast one to teach her a lesson, but the stinging pain in her back proved that a false assumption. Some asshole had better at least have sterilized his pocket knife or what ever they had used to cut into her.   
And because Esset used a dissolving coating on their implants, it would have stopped working the minute it hit air, so there was no way anyone could back track it, or put it on something else and send people on a useless chase. Esset would be able to track her to the last working position of the chip, but had her captors been smart enough to move her?   
At the moment, her only option was to wait. Find out who her captors were, what the routine was, and then find a way to kill them all and escape.   
She looked at the wig and glasses on the table and frowned slightly. They had left them there for a reason. Lazy, or to let her know they had seen through her disguise as Elizabet Wei, science news reporter out of Hong Kong?   
Well, that was their first mistake.

@ @ @

“You look ahead and tell me right now that my mother is going to be okay,” Yuuji demanded, dumping his suitcase on the kerb.   
For an answer, Brad took the underwear out of his pocket and handed it over in a bundle. “Prague is on the other side of the planet,” he explained.   
Yuuji’s face fell into dismay. “When we get there?”  
“If I can locate her timeline,” Brad said. “And put those away before Fujimiya notices them,” he hissed in German.  
Yuuji looked down at the underwear in his hand. “Shit. I thought you gave me a handkerchief,” he stuffed them in his pants back pocket.   
“Why would I give you a handkerchief,” Brad asked blankly.  
“Because I’m upset, you heartless bastard! That’s my mother out there somewhere in the clutches of gods know who or what. What if she’s been raped and murdered by some serial killer? My Mother, do you understand? My mommy has disappeared,” Yuuji tried to get it through his thick head.   
“Well then, we’ll kill who ever is responsible. Nagi, luggage,” Brad reminded him. “And they’re clean, so if you need to cry, go for it,” he gave the blond a weird look and went around the front of the van to get into the driver’s seat.   
Nagi rolled his eyes and started loading up the van.   
Fujimiya came out lugging his cloth wrapped sword and dragging his suitcase. “What are you standing there for? Get in the car.”  
Yuuji rolled his own eyes and got into the van.

 

 


	11. Eleven

  
Cheiko’s hazel brown eyes popped open. Someone was using a key in the door to the room. She sat up on the edge of the cot and waited. From what she had heard through the door frame earlier, there were only two voices out there. Hopefully, no one extra was a mute.   
A man cautiously looked in, his eyes tracking her to the bed, then opened the door the rest of the way. “You don’t try anything,” He warned gruffly, a gun in his free hand. The other hand held a plastic tray with a styrofoam take out box on it. “You want food, you sit there, do nothing.” A click of the lock meant the door was being locked from the outside. The other one was out there.   
“Yes, I want food,” she said. He was speaking English, but not like it was a first language. There was something ponderous in his intonation. Slavic, perhaps? The locals?   
He walked over and set the tray on the little table over the flimsy bucket toilet, which was to serve as a seat, she supposed.   
Looking him right in the eyes, when he glanced to set the tray down, she was up and across the small space in a heartbeat. One karate chop cracked his wrist, knocking the gun away. The other hand jabbed a broken temple piece from her glasses into his throat. She tumbled his collapsing body over the bend of her back to soften his fall and put her bare foot over his mouth to prevent him from making any noise as he　died drowning in his own blood. He’d made barely a soft thud, nothing that could have been heard through the door.   
Quickly, she felt his pockets. No keys. Nothing. She went to the door and tapped twice, curtly, as if a man ready to come out with a gun in his other hand would, she hoped. The food smelled foreign, yet edible and tempting, but she would eat when she was out of here.   
After a moment, the door opened.   
With her foot in the gap, she shoved the door open all the way and hauled the guy into the room by his clothing, flinging him onto his face. She straddled his back as he tried to get to his feet, knocking the air out of him. Tightening her knees on his ribs to make it difficult for him to catch his breath, she jammed the other broken off temple piece into his ear.   
He gawped and gagged, half paralyzed, his brains scrambled by the damage. She grabbed his chin and the back of his head, and finished him with a sharp twist. Hell of a way to die, that, but she’d made it quick. After all, she was a doctor.   
She got up and looked into the other room. Only two, thank goodness. She checked and found a cell phone in the second guy’s pocket. The history listed three incoming calls from one number. It was a cheap tosser, not a smart phone. She didn’t dare use it. She straightened up and for a moment was a little dizzy. “Too damned old for this shit,” she laughed a little, catching her breath and pushing her short bobbed hair out of her face.  
She searched the outer room. There was nothing. No indication of what was going on here, or why they had targeted her. The phone showed it was two days after her arrival date. What ever they had used on her, it had been either an excessively large dose, or they had jabbed her again in order to transfer her. When had they discovered the chip? And for that matter, how the hell had these two dunces known to look for it?   
She was in her stocking feet, her shoes gone. Her soft knit traveling clothes were stale; she’d had an ‘accident’ while unconscious that had dried. Embarrassing, but there you were, stuff happened. Where ever she was, there was a city outside those bars, and she would simply go out and yell her head off until the authorities were summoned.   
She opened the door and stood frozen in her tracks.   
There were two men there, one with a key in his hand. Everyone did the blank stare thing, and then before she could move, a gun was aimed at her from beside the guy with the key’s arm.   
“Far enough, Ms. Wei, or who ever you are,” the man said in American accented English. 

@ @ @ 

Nagi let the luggage drop on the floor and set his own laptop case on a small table in the three bedroom suite. Even with the private jet Esset had diverted for them, the trip had taken eight hours. They were eight more hours behind Sarazawa Cheiko’s abduction.   
Brad had seen no reason not to set up in their usual level of luxury. Especially in a place named `Prague’. There was something about that word that conjured up garrets, rats, roaches and starving artists, all of which he despised. He undid his tie and looked around. “Schuldig, sit down over there and get started.” He pointed to an arm chair by a window over looking a park.   
“Any particular thing I am to listen for?” the red head asked, walking over and plunking down into the chair. He did not look very happy, but then he never did when he was expected to actually listen to the great roar of humanity.   
Brad checked. It was like looking through a large koi pond at feeding time for a particular pattern of koi. There was far too much going on, too many thrashing timelines bubbling over, overlapping and intersecting in the city to isolate any one lead. “Try prisoner transfers.”   
Schuldig closed his eyes, took a deep breath and went hunting in his own way. He knew Brad would bring him back with a touch if he got lost. That made this a lot less frightening than it had been, ‘Before Brad’.  
Nagi knew to be focused and quiet, but Yuuji and Aya had been warned. No strong emotions, no loud voices or thoughts, nothing to interfere with the telepath’s work.   
Aya decided the quietest thing to do would be to just lay down and relax. He’d been stressed out a lot at the training and transit camp job and needed to sleep it off. Everything was just so overwhelmingly foreign to him. He was concerned for Yuuji, and, having seen him go into fugues over ‘Asuka’, was worried this would be worse. The best thing he could do right now was keep his mind out of the telepath’s way.   
Yuuji was wound up so tight, he felt as if he were going to explode like one of his own bombs. How could his mother pull such a stupid stunt? Was his father right? Had she gone menopausal nuts? Why had she felt the need to go where this conference was when any number of Esset drones could have been assigned to go for her? And how had they known about the chip? Who the hell abducted someone and had a reader to find the little thing? This was too complicated, something just did not smell right about it.  
/Shut up, you,/ Schuldig grumbled.   
Yuuji set himself to calming down as best as he could. On top of everything, the whole Asuka thing was interfering with his mind again, sending gut wrenching flashes of false memory into his mind. “I’m sorry, Shuu, I can’t…” he said in frustration.  
“I can screen you out, but it would be better if someone just knocked you over the head,” the redhead stated aloud.   
Yuuji gave up and sat down on the suites undersized sofa, pulling out his phone and putting his earbuds in. He found some quiet jazz in his collection and forced himself to drift away on the notes. 

@ @ @

Four hours later, Nagi came up with something. “Guys, the local police just responded to a report of two dead bodies in an empty office suite. The weapons were still in the wound; temple pieces off a pair of sunglasses. Un-rented office suite, new metal bars lock bolted on the inside window frame, portable toilet, camping cot, no ID on the bodies. They found a black wig and the front of the glasses in the inner office beside the cot. The building’s realtor went to investigate a random remark by another tenant that someone had moved in and found them,” he checked the screen. “Possibly a day old, waiting for the coroner’s report.”  
Brad looked into the timeline. If they went to the police station…”Nothing. They have two dead bodies with no known affiliations and a black wig along with a broken pair of Channel sunglasses. That’s a dead end. Schuldig, keep looking.”  
“My mom is one of those Channel freaks,” Yuuji said, having pulled out his earbuds. He sat up on the couch. “And who the hell else would think to use their glasses to kill someone? Even I wouldn’t have thought of that. She got away.”  
“Almost a day ago. If she had gotten free, she would have contacted Esset by now,” Brad reminded him.   
“Stomp on my heart, why don’t you?” Yuuji said bitterly.   
Brad went over to lay a hand on Schuldig’s shoulder. “Schuldig. We’re going. Nagi’s got a lead.”  
Schuldig opened his eyes and blinked, recognition slowly focusing in his tiffany blue eyes. “I have to pee,” he got up and headed to the bathroom.  
“Nagi, keep monitoring the net for now. Black wig and sunglasses. Scan the airport security files. Find which flight she might have been on and what name she was under,” Brad ordered. “Schuldig, Yuuji, and I will go interview witnesses. Fujimiya stays.” The Japanese agents would look too out of place here, and Fujimiya was too eye catching.   
Yuuji went to look in on Aya, who was still asleep. He scrawled a note on the hotel pad and left it where the young man could find it.  
Schuldig came out of the bathroom and Brad tossed him his short green denim jacket. “Anything at all?”  
“Do you have any idea how many kidnappings involving women take place in this city, let alone the authorities moving people around?” the redhead slipped his arm into a sleeve, then felt for and found the other armhole. He pulled his long hair out of the back collar and shrugged the jacket into place on his shoulders. A thoughtful frown was the only indication he was still half bothered by what he had ‘seen’.   
“Too many,” Brad said, brushing a stray stand of copper off a sun freckled cheek. “But now we have narrowed down the area.”

@ @ @ 

Chieko was not happy. Her captors had set up what they had thought was a Chinese journalist. Who they were, they would not say, but it was written all over their actions. CIA.   
They had her chip, useless as it was. Her purse and passport lay on the table. The guy sat there, twiddling the little pea sized device in his fingertips. “So who puts a sophisticated GPS tracking bug in a journalist, and why the disguise?” he asked, looking at her with a bland expression. He looked like he was expecting a load of lies anyway.   
She sat with her arms crossed, refusing to talk. They had not given her shoes, or allowed her to clean up, and her stained knee socks now had a hole under the toe ball of each foot. It was one of those things that drove a sock conscious Japanese person nuts.   
“You’re not actually Chinese, are you?” he set the chip down on the table between them and looked at her directly.   
“Brilliant deduction,” she said, her resolve to remain silent evaporated with her temper. “Because you know, all we Asians look alike. And what a good job you did of abducting a middle aged housewife who snuck out against her husband’s wishes to go walk about in beautiful, historic Prague. How the hell was I supposed to know the fake ID they sold me was some real person?”   
He studied her. “Your husband put a chip on you?” he said skeptically.  
“What century are you in? Japanese have been putting chips in against just such ridiculous happenings since the 90s when we were all filthy rich.”   
His expression didn’t change. He had that stone faced thing going almost as good as Ishida, but he lacked the extra basaltic gravitas a samurai gene lent. He was just one of those block headed, round eyed Americans, chosen for looking like no one special for a reason. They could disappear in any crowd--except maybe, that is, in a non-Caucasian laden country. Like China.   
Her eyes narrowed at him. “You wanted a Chinese to turn into an agent. A journalist, specifically one with at least a grounding in medical science? So you could steal medical advances, or worse, come up with some new dangerous ‘drug’ to unleash on some third world population. How’s that Ebola Zombie thing going?”  
He frowned, anger flashing in his brown eyes. He was the one doing the interrogating here.   
But Chieko wanted to fight back and what was a little turning of the tables to liven things up? “You people spend way too much time fucking up other countries when you should have been taking care of your own. Look at the mess you caused in Libya, and almost all of South America? What the hell was that all about?” she shook a finger at him from side to side, “but you screwed up in South East Asia, didn’t you? First the Philippines told you to fuck off, and then we Japanese tossed you out on your over bearing asses. The Koreans were always blowing smoke up everyone’s ass, and you wanted that ‘in’ to China. So you’ve started abducting Chinese and black mailing them into acting for you? Because you can not trust your own Chinese-Americans to not give themselves away, or be spying already for the homeland.”  
“You seem to know a lot for a middle aged housewife,” he said, forcing himself back to neutrally.   
“Who the hell has not seen all the movies?” she slapped her palm down flat on the table, leaning forward and giving him a cold sneer. “Cliché.”   
He frowned even more.   
“And now what?” she badgered, on a roll now. “You send me off to Cuba, to your little oubliette in Guantanamo? Big brave American CIA operative, locking up a harmless little housewife.”  
“Who just happened to kill two men with her sunglasses and broke their necks bare handed,” he bluntly reminded her.   
She pouted. “That was an accident.”   
His eyes narrowed dangerously. At least they put her back in a room by herself. 

@ @ @

Brad looked up at the building the bodies had been found in, tucking the car keys in his suit jacket pocket. It was a ten story office building with a variety of office suites to rent by the month, or lease by the year, served by a concierge desk in the entry. Very convenient for temporary quarters to be used by con artists and ‘fly by night’ scam companies, as well as kidnappers.   
Schuldig stepped out of the rental car and joined him.   
“Will it be easier from the inside?” Brad asked.  
“The level the suite is in,” the telepath said, his head already aching with his efforts. (You try watching a couple of thousand data channels, hundreds at the same time for hours while getting the gist of each individual one and see if your head does not ache like the mother of all hangovers).   
Brad took him by the arm, and the noise stopped, giving him a mental breather. “Yuuji, go find the building manager’s office and see if you can get descriptions or security cam print outs, anything.”  
“I know the game,” Yuuji said grimly, wishing he had a cigarette yet again. (Fuck off Kudoh, he thought to himself angrily). If this kept up, he was going to just give up and start smoking! He headed for the business directory on the foyer wall, noting the security camera up in the corner of the front desk.   
Brad walked with Schuldig to the stairs rather than the elevator. “We’ll start at the top and work our way down.”  
And so they did. Two floors above the one the bodies were found on Schuldig picked up a troubled mind. He stood against the outer door of an office and began to subtly pry.   
It was a woman, who for amateurs, were always better at noticing things. The two men who had been found. She was wondering what the big crate they had taken into the suite had contained.   
He shook his head at Brad, then started down the rest of the hall, which went in a circle with elevators on each end, trailing his fingers along doors to act like extra antennae.   
The next floor down, he caught a lucky whiff of intense annoyance. Some bastards had been in someone’s marked off parking. He, the annoyed one, had given the police the descriptions. A rental car, Americans. Something shady was going on when the Americans were involved and sure enough, someone had turned up dead.   
Schuldig shot Brad a nod and tried the door to the office. It opened.   
Locking down the minds of the two women and one man in the front work area to ignore their entrance, he led the way to the inner door and walked in. Brad shut the door behind them and discreetly turned the knob lock behind his back.   
The man looked up from his computer in surprise. “Can I help you?” he said in his own language.   
Schuldig did not care for small talk. He reached across the desk and put his hand on the man’s, taking over his mind.  
He found the memory of the men who had argued with him over the space, and while the human mind does a crappy job of remembering things, the human eye is still a camera. The guy might not remember the descriptions too well, but the eyes had seen, and Schuldig passed the images to Brad.   
The day before the two Czechs had been killed, these two Americans had parked in the wrong spot, argued with a legitimate tenant, and been seen taking the stairs. Big, well fed, worked out Americans with cheap black suits and an air of the licensed thug about them that said either military or police. 

@ @ @

The security/IT guy went through the security footage in the files, from the time Sarazawa’s quarry was gone to the present. The murdered men, a couple of types more likely to be tossing people out of bars than office workers, had gone up to the empty office door, unlocked it with a key, gone in. Later that day, they moved in boxes, one of them a camping cot large enough for the picture on the box to be seen.   
The next day, they had a crate delivered.   
“She had to have been in the crate,” Yuuji murmured. He looked up at the guard who had kindly helped him. “Did anyone find pieces of this crate?”   
“We have a furnace downstairs for burnables,” the man said in fairly good English, happy to help the ‘American police agent`. Why, he had no idea, but what the hell, the guy seemed decent enough. Had even brought him a coffee, chatted him up, seemed genuinely interested in the job he did, unlike the local police who acted like he was a joke, sitting around all day, watching cameras. They had ragged him badly for the guys with the key. If anyone had a key, he naturally assumed they were tenants.   
Yuuji sipped his own coffee from the little shop around the corner. It was actually quite good. Stirring the poor guy’s cup with his fingers had probably not ruined the flavor. Caffeine always seemed to heighten and hasten the effect, though, so he had to work fast and keep him talking to slow down the ‘dose’. “Let’s look at the next day.”   
The IT guy clicked on the murder floor’s cam file for the next day and ran through it for signs of anyone going to the door. Just as he was about to give up at the time the building would soon be closing for the night and try the next day, two suited men got off the west elevator and looked around at the numbers. Then they headed for the door of the death suite, still looking around as they went.   
As they got to it and one pulled out a key, the door opened. One man pushed someone back inside and the other walked toward the elevator again. He looked up at the camera, and reached up. Then the screen went blank.  
“What’s this?” Yuuji asked, tapping the screen. “Did they leave it in place?”  
“That’s what the police want to know,” the guard said. “Bastard pulled the wires right out. Notice he was wearing those black mechanic’s gloves, too.”   
“They knew they would be leaving town before the authorities got them,” Yuuji stated grimly. 

@ @ @

In the building foyer, Schuldig compared the visual in Yuuji’s mind, a nice close up from the camera in the hall, to the images he had gleaned from the guy who’s car had been displaced two days ago, and passed them to Brad.   
“Damned Mum-nappers,” Yuuji grumbled. “American. CIA, or I’m a monkey.”  
“You are a monkey,” Schuldig said. “I’ve seen you work.”  
Yuuji gave him a cool look. Schuldig half grinned, half grimaced and backed off the teasing, having caught the flicker of an emberassing memory in the man’s devious mind.   
“Pull yourself together,” Brad told Yuuji before he could continue on the path he had been on.   
“Can’t you look,” Yuuji all but pleaded. “Aren’t we close enough now?”  
Brad softened a little, but his irritation showed. “Not yet,” he laid a hand on Yuuji’s upper arm, squeezing a little. “But we’re getting closer.” He let his hand fall again. “Nagi’s got something,” he took out his phone as it buzzed. “Yes.”  
“Message from home,” Nagi said. “One of our people reported a communique to CIA headquarters regarding a prisoner fitting Sarazawa-Sensei’s description yesterday. They just sorted the data transfer and it rang the bell. Suspected spy, Japanese posing as Chinese national. They’re requesting a military transport for her, Czechoslovakia to the USA.”  
“When?” Brad asked.   
“No response yet,” Nagi replied, “Our agent has been notified to report immediately when a decision is made.”  
“We have time, then,” Brad said, looking at the other two. “We just got lucky. Now if only she’ll stay put long enough for us to rescue her. Keep on it,” he cut the call and put the phone away, looking at Yuuji. “Love how they still think they can just grab a person off the street with no valid reason and make them disappear while insisting they are the ‘good guys’. As far as I know, your mother was no threat to American national security,” he gave Yuuji a raised eyebrow. 

TBC

 


	12. Twelve

Chapter 12

  
Schuldig was already occupying the suite’s lounge area sofa, laying full length with an ice pack on his head. Brad took the arm chair at his feet. His own head ache demanded the fresh coffee in his hand. Dinner had been a depressing discussion as to why the CIA had nabbed a supposedly Chinese journalist, the conclusion could only be that they had wanted to suborn a spy.  
Yuuji had snagged the first shower and went to mope in the bedroom he and Aya had claimed. Aya was in the shower now. Nagi was at the small writing table, lost in the internet.  
Brad still could not get over looking at him and seeing the tall young man who looked familiar but wasn’t quite. When he didn’t look at him, he could cope, but visually, the strangeness threw him. ‘Still Nagi,’ he had to remind himself.  
“So. What now?” Schuldig asked, not opening his eyes.  
“We wait. Until someone makes a decision on what airport, or private landing field, or what ever. And if she stays put to be rescued. I’m hoping that because they know she’s dangerous, they’ll do a better job of keeping her tied up.”  
“If we could find her sooner, I could warn her to stay put,” Schuldig said.  
“Not that easy,” Brad said. “Too many timelines still in play. We have to wait. Anything could change. And there are our agents embedded with the CIA to protect. The way things are now, they’re golden and we need to keep them in place. If we move too fast, too accurately, they may be compromised, or at least suspected.”  
Schuldig took the icepack off and sat up to look at him. “Listen to you, Mister Responsible. Since when do you care about anyone who isn’t temporarily useful to you alone.”  
Brad rolled his eyes. “Remember what I said. I like a world where I can live in comfort. We missed World War 3, but do you really want to trigger World War 4? That might be a little too messy, even if Esset disarms the remaining hot heads.”  
“Or come up with a bigger boom,” Schuldig said. “Nagi, stop looking at porn and check the message site.”  
“I am not looking at porn,” Nagi went red faced with denial. “I’m chatting with Tot. And I have the message site set to notify, so go soak your head and shut up.”  
“Ugh, he’s gotten so mean,” Schuldig told Brad. “Can we send him to Shinjuku and collect him back when he was 13 again?”  
“Sixteen!” Nagi protested. “You keep forgetting I was sixteen, and it doesn’t work that way.”  
Schuldig gave him a mocking look. “How do we know that, when we still don’t know when you were hatched?”  
“Nagi,” Brad warned. “Some of us are sitting on the cushions.”  
Nagi’s eyes narrowed dangerously, then he went back to his laptop screen.  
“Schuldig, behave,” Brad said mildly, sipping his coffee and strangely consoled. Some things had not changed.

@ @ @

Chieko was running through the current lab work in her mind. It was preferable to going insane being locked up like this.  
While Esset did not approve of cloning, which lead to the same sort of genetic shit as inbreeding, they had invested quite a lot into genetic research and application, and she was in the second generation of Esset’s Science arm to further perfect the process. The goal was not to cure diseases already prevalent in a genetically failing population, but to take the best of the best and see what made them tick, then produce more. And while for decades the outside world had protested such work as immoral and ungodly, real scientists saw it as nothing more than a continuation of Mendel’s work. A stronger, hardier, more intelligent people; yes, boo hoo, Eugenics. People often forgot due to propaganda from a certain quarter, that eugenics was not just about disposing of unwanted sub-norms, but of preventing defects in the first place.  
However, she had seen the results of going too far. Being forced to jam too much promising DNA into one batch of infants, the results had been crops of monsters, and the few survivors only the Elders could control. She had made up her own mind to destroy all the research and lab work on the project the moment the Elder’s deaths had been announced. Geisel had been quiet since Berger’s death, but she had black marked his file. His talent was not worth the mental issues that came with it. The Elder’s prize pet, clinically insane Leila, had been a danger to all of them. Disposing of the little red headed psychopath had been difficult but necessary.  
There had to be a way to isolate the ‘crazy gene'.  
Every talent had a flaw. The higher the level of talent, the more evident the flaw. And nurture could not always trump nature. Especially with the Elders getting senile and treating the youth of Esset like loaded and disposable guns. But they were gone now, and after ‘retiring’ the doddering old hard core bastard in charge of the labs, she had shifted research into a more cautious direction.  
And rather than wait for papers to come out, too impatient even for ‘surreptitiously borrowed’ information, she had wanted to attend a conference to hear the first hand thinking of her fellow scientists; to meet and converse with alternative view points. To cleanse her mind of the nightmarish tasks she had been handed for the last twenty years, and strive for more purity of goal.  
The door opened and she sat up on the bed. Blockhead One (as she had decided to name them) had brought her food.  
They had allowed her to shower and change into a too large t-shirt and elastic waist pants of a horrendous clashing neon lime and orange (she supposed the next best thing to a prison boiler suit), a sports bra, panties, and cheap flip-flops. She viciously hoped the one who had done the shopping had been embarrassed. The sports bra had been too loose, but she had put it on anyway. “Lucky for you the ubiquitous Walmart has invaded all the world,” she told the blockhead, plucking at her t-shirt, the chains rattling.  
He ignored her and put the styrofoam box on the shelf-like, drawer-less ‘dresser’ of the cheap hotel room. He walked out, shutting and locking the door. She had been given the choice of screaming and getting drugged unconscious for the rest of the trip, or staying quiet. She preferred clean cloths and a working mind.  
She sighed and looked at the chains on her wrists that were linked to the chains on her ankles. At least they were feeding her, she reminded herself. But she still had no idea of why they had grabbed her in the first place, other than the obvious.

@ @ @

Aya had changed into baggy gym pants and walked into the bedroom to find Yuuji laying on the bed, ear buds in. “Are you still awake?” he asked quietly.  
Yuuji raised his head, then half sat up, pulling out the earbuds with one hand while leaning on his other elbow. He looked half asleep but tired, with slowly darkening circles under his eyes. “Any news?”  
“Not that I’ve heard,” Aya said, sitting down beside him. “I just got out of the shower. But they would have told you if there had been.”  
Yuuji flopped back again and spared a hand for Aya’s thigh, his eyes closed.  
Aya leaned over, half braced on Yuuji’s chest and kissed him on the chin, stroking his hair back. “Talk to me,” he said softly.  
Yuuji sighed. Then he reached up and pulled Aya down into a real kiss. When he released him, Aya shifted onto the bed and squiggled close, Yuuji’s arm around him, his head on Yuuji’s shoulder. “Don’t feel like it.”  
Aya lay still a while. Yuuji was collapsing from the inside, hollowing out. He knew that feeling. He’d spent years living like that, standing beside his sister’s hospital bed, visiting his parent’s grave. He rubbed Yuuji’s abdomen. “I love you,” he whispered.  
Yuuji took up the hand on his stomach and kissed it. “Thank you, Aya,” he said softly, then twined his fingers in Aya’s long ones and laid them back on his stomach. In moments, his breathing slowed and he was asleep.  
Aya frowned. Damn it. One more night with out sex.

@ @ @

Nagi heard the ping from his laptop and sat up on the sofa, flailing for the keyboard on the coffee table. The screen lit up. He sought and found the sender. He pushed his hair back and leaned over to open the email.  
It had an address, and time, that was all. He copy pasted the address to Maps and got a satellite view of a small airport an almost 20 mile drive to the north west of the city’s suburbs. The time listed was 3 am. “Shit,” he said. He got up to go tap on the door to Brad and Schuldig’s room. “Guys, what ever you are doing in there, stop it. We’ve got time and place and it’s going to be a rush job!” He then banged on Sarazawa and Fujimiya’s room. “Sarazawa, we’ve located your mom! Roll out!” he called. “If Brad drives like a maniac, we might catch them before they get off the ground!” He used his talent to flip all the light switches on and went to pull his clothes on. There was no time for fighting with the silly one cup at a time coffee maker on the bar counter. They would just have to tough it out.

@ @ @

Brad cursed the timing of the undercover agent and drove like a maniac. Schuldig quashed any notice of them the police took, and they somehow made it before the small private jet arrived. The tower was not open. The runway was black with the night. It wasn’t much in the way of airports, maintained only for local pilots doing god knows what and a few high end clients who liked to park their private planes nearby. “Nagi, get us coffee.” He noted the small closed café near by the tower.  
Nagi sighed and marched off to break in and make coffee, because orders were orders.  
Twenty minutes later, Brad had a take away cup of coffee in one hand, an only slightly stale donut in the other, and the sky was a faint pre-grey. “Here it comes,” he said.  
Of course no one else saw it yet.  
Yuuji watched the road. “If they’ve hurt her, I get to kill them.”  
“If I get woke up in the middle of the night to go on a mad ride like that, I get to kill someone,” Aya insisted in that awfully manly voice of his.  
“No one kills anyone,” Brad stated. “We take Sarazawa-sensei and go. I want them to have to explain to their masters why they don’t have her. Schuldig will deal with it.”  
“’Schuldig will deal with it’,” the redhead complained. “Schuldig wants three more hours sleep and a back rub, but is he going to get it...?”  
“No,” Brad finished for him, eating the last of the donut. He wiped his hand on an also purloined napkin before picking up and sipping the not quite so horrid coffee. He set it down on the hood of the rental car again before pulling out his gun and checking it, then holstering it again as a set of headlights came down the drive to the airport. “Blind them to us,” he told Schuldig.  
“No, I thought we would set up balloons and a boom box with a marching band,” was Schuldig’s sarcastic reply.  
“Next time mention that earlier,” Yuuji said, amused. The fact that they were going to get his mother back had changed his mood considerably. He just hoped she was unharmed. He had, admittedly, been relieved to see that the Americans had her, rather than some medieval minded religion based group.  
The plane circled and started its slow landing process, helped by a powerfully bright light from the underside aimed at the runway.  
A car pulled up ten yards away from where they were. Brad and the gang waited patiently while Schuldig did his thing.  
Inside, Chieko blinked as the two CIA agents suddenly passed out. Then she inhaled deeply and all the stress in her body that she had not realized had built up so much dropped away.  
A moment later, the back passenger door opened on her side, opposite the slumped agent who had been back there with her, and her son leaned in to look at her. Grinning, he held up his phone and snapped a photo. “You are in so much trouble when we get home.”  
“Yuu-chan, don’t you dare!” she ordered, realizing what he was up to.  
He sent the photo to his father’s phone and tucked it back into his back pocket. “Move fast, the plane is landing and we want to leave them guessing.” He caught her arm and helped her out. Before she could get settled on her own feet, he swung her up over his shoulder and ran for the rental car.  
Schuldig leaned on the car and had a good search of the mind of the CIA agent in the driver’s seat.  
“The keys!” Chieko called from Yuuji’s back. “Get the bloody keys!”  
Schuldig ignored her, taking everything he could get from the agent’s mind. He would do better if he could have the guy for a few hours, but that was not going to happen.  
“Schuldig, hurry it up!” Brad called as the plane tapped the ground with its back wheels, then bounced and came down fully on all three sets.  
He broke the link and ran back to the car, hopping in to the front passenger seat just as Nagi gave the plane a shove and sent it careening across the runway to pull up in a desperate wobble, the engines whining to climb up and try again.  
“Smart,” Brad grinned in the rearview as he got into the driver’s seat.  
Nagi grinned back, then focused on getting the locks on Sarazawa-sensei’s manacles to open. Yuuji helped her off with them and dropped the chains out the window as Brad spun the car around and raced down the drive to the road.  
“What the hell am I sitting on?” Chieko said, sounding irritated and shocked.  
Aya shifted hastily. “Sorry,” he pulled the handle of the sheathed katana out from under her left butt cheek. In his hurry to dive into the back seat, it had gotten twisted the wrong way. He blushed furiously, hoping she would not notice in the dark interior.  
Yuuji had his arm around her shoulders and gave her a sideways hug. “Bad mother,” he stated.  
She pouted. “I missed the conference.”  
“Next time put in a request and have a security team go with you!” Brad snapped, taking a corner rather sharply.  
“Or better yet, just stay put and send a data collection team,” Yuuji said. “We very nearly did not find you. Father would have shot us all. Schuldig, did you get anything useful?”  
Schuldig was puzzling over the information he had gleaned. “The Chinese have been implanting memory chips and transferring information that way rather than risking the net. They ran a scanner over her as a matter of course, looking for a hidden data device. They are searching for Chinese agents who have been stripping information from the tech companies who were kicked out of Pacifica. Sarazawa-sensei’s fake ID persona showed her as having been in Pacifica in the last six months on assignment from The Straits Times. Pure coincidence. If she hadn’t killed those two minders they hired from a Czech gang, she would have been taken to Washington D.C. and threatened into being a double agent, innocent or not.”  
“Better keep your mind on the road,” Brad said. “Cop in ten.”  
“Shinjuku,” Schuldig said, still mulling it over. “They are concerned about the time change factor in Shinjuku.”  
“Shit,” Nagi said, holding the car on the road as Brad went into one of his major visions.  
“Shit,” Brad echoed when he came back to the present, frowning. “They want Shinjuku.”

 

 

 


End file.
